It was very fine; but
he needn't have made fun of ME.
MAGGIE [losing a stitch]. He dared?
DAVID [depressed]. You see I can not get started on a speech without
saying things like 'In rising FOR to make a few remarks.'
JAMES. What's wrong with it?
DAVID. He mimicked me, and said, 'Will our worthy chairman come for
to go for to answer my questions?' and so on; and they roared.
JAMES [slapping his money pocket]. The sacket.
DAVID. I did feel bitterly, father, the want of education. [Without
knowing it, he has a beautiful way of pronouncing this noble word.]
MAGGIE [holding out a kind hand to him]. David.
ALICK. I've missed it sore, David. Even now I feel the want of it in
the very marrow of me. I'm ashamed to think I never gave you your
chance. But when you were young I was so desperate poor, how could I
do it, Maggie?
MAGGIE. It wasn't possible, father.
ALICK [gazing at the book-shelves]. To be able to understand these
books! To up with them one at a time and scrape them as clean as
though they were a bowl of brose. Lads, it's not to riches, it's to
scholarship that I make my humble bow.
JAMES [who is good at bathos]. There's ten yards of them. And they
were selected by the minister of Galashiels. He said--
DAVID [quickly]. James.
JAMES. I mean--I mean--
MAGGIE [calmly]. I suppose you mean what you say, James. I hear,
David, that the minister of Galashiels is to be married on that Miss
Turnbull.
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