The Silver Maple. Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
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Scotty was disdainful. "I don't like girls. They will jist be cry-babies. Is the boy as big as me?"
"He's a little bigger, I guess. He goes to school away in Toronto."
"Bet I could fight him. Is Toronto away over in the old country?"
"No, it's in Canada. Be quiet. I want to read."
"Oh! Is Canady very far away?"
"No, it's right here; this is Canada."
"Oh! An' will the school-house be in Canady too?"
"Yes."
"An' the Captain's house?"
"Imph-n-n."
"Oh! An' all, Oro, an' Lake Simcoe? What will you be laughing at?"
"Wait till old McAllister learns you some geography. You'll hear something about Canada that'll surprise you, whatever."
"It won't be as big as the old country, though, will it?" But Hamish did not answer. He was far away with David Copperfield once more. The boy raised the fly-leaf and took another peep at the name. He sat very quiet for a few moment's and then he crept closer to his uncle, a red flush creeping up under the tan of his cheeks, his black eyes shining.
"Hamish!" he whispered, "Hamish, will that be an—English name?"
"Eh? What name?" Hamish awoke reluctantly to the troublesome realities. "I'll not know."
"Aw, tell me, Hamish!"
"My, but you will be a bother! Yes, Herbert will be an English name, but Isabel Douglas is Scotch, an' a fine Hielan' name, too. But what in the world would you be wanting to know for?"
Scotty hesitated. He hung his black, curly head, and swung his feet in embarrassment; but finally he looked up desperately.
"Do you know what made Danny Murphy say I was an Englishman?" he whispered.
Hamish stifled a laugh. "It would likely jist be his natural Irish villainy," he suggested solemnly.
But Scotty shook his head at even such a natural explanation. "No, it would not be that, it would be—because—the master said it, Hamish!"
"The master?" Hamish's look of amusement changed to one of deep interest. "Why? What would he be saying?"
The boy glanced around the room apprehensively, but the rest of the family were still absorbed in Weaver Jimmie. "When we would be coming into the school," he whispered hurriedly, "the master would be calling all the new ones to the front. An' he says to me, 'What's your name, child?' An I says, 'It's Scotty,—Scotty MacDonald.' An' he says, 'Hut tut, another MacDonald! Yon's no name. Whose bairn are ye?' An' I told him I belonged to Grandaddy an' the boys; an' he says,—an' he says, 'Oh tuts, I know you now. You're Big Malcolm's English grandson!' He would be saying that, Hamish! An' he wrote a name for me; see!" He had been growing more and more excited as the recital proceeded, and at this point he jerked from his bosom a torn and battered primer that had done duty in the few days that Hamish had attended school. Under the scrawling marks that stood for Hamish's name was written in a fine scholarly flourish, "Ralph Everett Stanwell."
"Humph!" Hamish gazed at the book, and a look of sadness crept into his kind, brown eyes. He glanced across the room at his father. Weaver Jimmie had just departed, and Callum was leaning over the back of his chair laughing immoderately, while Rory was out in the middle of the floor executing a lively step-dance accompanied by voice and fiddle to the words, "Ha! Ha! the wooin' o't!"
"Look here, father," called Hamish, "do you see what the schoolmaster would be writing in Scotty's book?"
Big Malcolm took the primer, adjusted his spectacles, and moved the little book up and down before the candle to get the proper focus. "Ralph Everett Stanwell," he read slowly. "What kind o' a name would that be, whatever!" he cried, with a twinkle in his eye.
"It's got a fearsome kind of a sough to it," said Callum apprehensively.
"It will be an English name!" cried Scotty fiercely, "an' Peter Lauchie would be saying it is jist no name at all!"
The young men burst into laughter, which served only to increase their nephew's wrath. He sprang out upon the floor, his black eyes blazing, and stamped his small foot.
"I'll not be English!" he shouted. "It's jist them louts from the Tenth is English! An' I'll be Hielan'. An' it's not my name!"
"Eh, eh, mannie!" cried his grandmother gently. She laid her hand on the boy's arm and drew him toward her. "That will be no way for a big boy that will be going to school to behave," she whispered. The child turned to her and saw to his amazement that her eyes were full of tears. His sturdy little figure stiffened suddenly, and he made a desperate effort for self-control.
"But it would be a great lie, Granny!" he faltered appealingly.
"Hoots, never you mind!" cried his grandfather, with strange leniency; and even in the midst of his passion Scotty dimly wondered that he did not receive a summary chastisement for his fit of temper. There was a strange, sad look in the man's eyes that alarmed the child more than anger would have done.
"Granny will be telling you all about it," he said, rising. "Come, lads, it will be getting late."
The three young men followed their father out to the stable. Ordinarily they attended to the evening duties there themselves, but to-night Big Malcolm wished to leave the boy alone with his grandmother, realising that the situation needed a woman's delicate handling.
This new proceeding filled Scotty with an added alarm. He clambered up on his grandmother's knee as soon as they were alone and demanded an explanation; surely that English name wasn't his. He whispered the momentous question, for though Old Farquhar was snoring loudly in his corner, Bruce was there, wide awake and looking up inquiringly, as though he could understand.
And so, with her arms about him, Granny told him for the first time the story of his birth. How Granny had had only one little girl, older than Callum, eh, and such a sweet lassie she was; how just when they had landed in Canada she had married a young Englishman who had come over with them on the great ship; how they had left them in Toronto when they came north to the forests of Oro; how their baby had come, the most beautiful baby, Granny's little girl wrote, and how she had written also that they, too, were coming north to live near the old folks when,—Granny's voice faltered,—when the fever came, and both Granny's beautiful little girl and her Englishman died, and Grandaddy and Callum had journeyed miles through the bush to bring Granny her baby, and how Kirsty John's mother had carried him all the way, and how he was all Granny had left of her bright lass!
At the sound of grief in his grandmother's voice, the child put up his hand to stroke her face, and found it wet with tears. Instantly he forgot his own trouble in sympathy for hers, and clasping his hands about her neck he soothed her in the best way he knew. He scarcely understood her grief; was Granny crying because he was only an Englishman after all? For to him, bereavement and death were but names, and in the midst of abounding love he had never realised the lack of parents.
He had often heard of them before, of his beautiful mother, whose eyes were so dark and whose hair was so curly like his own; and how his father had been such a fine, big, young man, and a gentleman too, though Scotty had often vaguely wondered just what that meant. But that his parents had left him an inheritance of a name and lineage other than MacDonald he had never dreamed. And now there was no denying the humiliating truth; his father had been an Englishman, he himself was English, and that disgraceful name, at which Peter Lauchie had sneered, was his very own. Henceforth he must be an outcast among the MacDonalds, and be classed with the English crew that lived over on the Tenth, and whom, everyone knew, the MacDonalds despised. Yes, and he belonged to the same class as that stuck-up Captain Herbert, who lived in that grand house on the north shore of Lake Oro, and whom his grandfather hated!
He managed to check his tears by the time the boys returned, but during prayers he crouched miserably in a dark corner behind Hamish, a victim of despair. He derived very little