Sandy Cameron ; or, The way one looks at it.

Front matter

V

“Oh, sir, we didn’t know you were a friend of Maggie’s.”

THE WAY OHE LOOKS AT IT.

Chapter II. Mothers S Little Man

T was Saturday night. The sun was going down behind Corstorphine hill, and the last glimmer stole lovingly along the old castle wall with the freedom of long acquaintanceship. No engine-whistle broke the stillness of the city, now preparing for its Sabbath rest. The lamplighters were going their rounds, and the shop windows were beginning to look bright and cheerful, as an elderly woman with her little boy started out to do the necessary shopping for the family requirements on the coming day. ‘‘Hurry up, my man! If the basket is too heavy for your arm, let me carry it a while.’’ It was Mrs. Cameron who spoke, and it was our young hero, Sandy, who mothek’s little man.

quickly answered : “ No, indeed, mother ; do ye call me your man, and think I’m not able to carry the basket for you?” The voice in which this question was asked was important enough to have belonged to the mayor himself, for the greatest dignity that could come to Sandy Cameron was his when he heard his mother’s voice pronounce him her “man.” He would willingly have trudged to the other end of the town with the basket on his arm for the sake of that honour. To tell the truth, it was not a heavy load ; a few ounces of tea, a loaf of bread, a small piece of meat, and some potatoes, with two or three cookies by way of a treat for Sandy, w^e all the basket contained. Anybody who passed the two on their way home might have been amused at the important air of the eight-year- old lad strutting along by his mother’s side, enjoying the thought that he was bearing her burdens and protecting her

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from all danger. When they reached home, Sandy opened the door for his mother, set down his basket in the hall, and untied the old shawl which he had worn around him in place of an overcoat. This and his cap he hung on a peg, and then sat down in his little chair by the fire to see pictures in the coals, and build his beautiful air-castles of growing to be a man and working hard till he became so rich that he could buy a house for his mother as fine as any in the town, and silk dresses too, and bonnets and cloaks, such as the ladies wore who rode about in their carriages looking so grand and happy. The small round face began to glow with excitement as, sitting there in the ’fire-light, its owner had all these visions pass before his mind as vividly as if they were reality. Unconsciously, Sandy began to whistle a merry tune, and his brown eyes grew larger and brighter as they gazed upon these beautiful things all mother’s little man.

pictured before him in the fantastic shapes of the coal. He might have got so far as to see his mother reigning as queen of England, and himself acting as her prime minister, if an interruption had not occurred. The door was opened and shut with a bang, and a man’s heavy tread fell upon the floor. Sandy did not need to look up to know that his father had come in, and that the evening’s pleasure was at an end.

‘‘ Move out of that corner, child, and let me get near the fire. Where’s your mother? There! get me my slippers, can’t you ? and don’t stand staring at me in that stupid way.”

It was so hard to come out of the ' happy land of fancy into the cheerless one of reality that poor Sandy did indeed look very stupid. He had upset his little chair in his haste to get out of his father’s way, and the merry whistle had been checked on his lips so abruptly that no words came readily to take its

SANDY CAMERON.

place. He brought the slippers, put away his father’s boots and overcoat, and then opened the door that led to the kitchen, where his mother was busy, and found voice to say, briefly : “ Father’s come, and wants you.”

Mrs. Cameron obeyed the call at once ; and as she had no need to inquire about her husband’s wishes, she quietly handed his pipe from the shelf where it was kept, brought a lamp and set it on the table, and then proceeded to mix the tumbler of toddy which he always took before going to bed. He swallowed the contents of the glass at once, and bade his wife fill it again. ‘‘ Don’t put so much water in ; you spoil it,” said he.

‘‘ Ah, Kichard !” she replied, in a sad tone that touched Sandy’s heart, though it did not his father’s, “if you take another glass, you will want still another, and you will not leave it until the bottle is empty.”

“What of that?” asked the man.

crossly. can get more easily

enough; weVe not so poor but that I can indulge in a drop o’ toddy now and then, I hope ; and if we are, I’ll drink the more to drown trouble. Why, woman, what with the loss of work and that sad look on your face whenever I come iiTthe house, it’s little pleasure I find; and surely you need not grudge me the only comfort I have.”

^‘Comfort!” repeated Mrs. Cameron, and there was a depth of meaning in the tone in which the single word was uttered. Then, after a pause, she said, speaking more to herself than to her husband : “ It’s all in the way one looks at it.”

Sandy, sitting all this time unobserved in a shadowed corner of the room, had heard the brief conversation. When his mother said these words, he remembered that she had made the same comment a few nights before when he had told her the story of the vennel monk.

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He understood the meaning of them then, but in the present application they puzzled him. His father had called his glass of toddy a comfort. That was plain enough, and what other way of looking at it could there be ? This wonder, once started in the boy’s mind, remained there, and furnished food for thought a long time after his mother had tucked him in for the night, and during his lonely walks to and from school.

Such questions started in the minds of little folks are wont to take root and grow like Jack’s famous bean-stalk, and older ones never suspect what is going on behind the active eyes and ears until some odd, wise speech like a sprout of the bean vine comes out of the child’s mouth and shows what the root must be. But Sandy came to know that the whisky-bottle was filled oftener than the market-basket, and that the patient, sorrowful look in his mother’s face which he could not bear to see was sure to mother's little man.

come whenever his father asked for his glass of toddy.

It is vexatious to go back in a story, just as it is to begin and work out a long sum when you know the answer already, but then you can’t really understand the sum or the story unless you are willing to go patiently step by step. I want you to be well acquainted with Sandy Cameron, and for that purpose you must learn all that concerned him, even before the date at which this story begins.

Though the little boy lived with his father and mother alone in the old house, it had not been so always. He was the youngest of a large family. Two brothers were grown up and married, and had homes of their own in Edinburgh. One sister had married and come to America, and another was a wealthy widow in London. Another brother and sister had died before Sandy was old enough to remember them, but

SANDY CAMERON.

often on Sunday afternoons his mother would take two pictures from a little box that stood on the table beside her Bible and was always locked, and show them to him, and tell him of things Jack and Jessie used to do and say when they were of his age. Thus the family was scattered by marriage and death, and out of all the number Mrs. Cameron had only her youngest left to go with her to market and to church, to run on errands for her and comfort her when she was lonely — in short, to be her ‘‘little man.’’

Mr. Cameron was a tailor by trade. In former years he had worked steadily, and had provided every comfort for his family. Now, however, he was often out of work, and just as often cross and unreasonable with his wife and Sandy. In these moods his wife was careful never to contradict him or vex him in any way ; but the child, ignorant of the cause of his father’s angry feelings, would argue with him in a wise little

MOTHER S LITTLE MAN.

way that he had, yet always with such deference that the father never got offended, and was often won to gentler thoughts.

One night Sandy went early to bed that his mother might have his trousers, which needed patching on both knees. He lay awake for a time thinking how good and kind his mother was, and wondering if all mothers were as good as she, and at last fell asleep to dream that the great work-basket, which at that very moment stood on the table in the other room piled up with stockings to be mended, had turned into a golden chariot with lovely white birds harnessed to it, and that he and his mother, comfortably seated inside, were being wafted away to the moon.

From this absurd but very pleasant vision Sandy was aroused by a sudden heavy thud, and he awoke with the impression that there must be an earthquake. He had been learning in his

SANDY CAMERON.

geography that very morning about earthquakes, and had seen the picture of one, where the people were all running away from an ugly opening in the ground ; so the noise naturally recalled the lesson to his mind. He sat up in bed and listened. The same noise came again. It was not an earthquake, but his father’s hand striking heavily on the table in the sitting-room. Then he heard sharp, cruel words uttered in a thick, unsteady voice, and he understood then, poor little boy ! that something different from an earthquake, but quite as bad, was tearing up the very foundations of his home and breaking his mother’s heart. Too well he knew whose voice it was that uttered those dreadful words, and to whom they were addressed. There were no more dreams for him that night of white birds wafting him and the one he loved best away from their troubles, although there did come to his mind a Bible verse which

MOTHER'S LITTLE MAN.

lie often read : ‘‘ Oh, that I had wings like a dove ! for then would I fly away, and be at rest.”

The excited tones of the drunken man terrified Sandy. What could he be scolding his mother so for? Would he strike her? If he were only big and strong, like Samson, or even like his oldest brother Robert, how quickly he would rush to the room and protect her ! One thing he could do, and that was to pray. Out of bed jumped little Sandy, and on the bare floor he knelt. He could not pray in a whisper; somehow his thoughts seemed too loud for that, and in distinct and simple words Jie begged his Father in heaven to be merciful to his father upon earth, to make him a good man, and not to let him trouble his dear mother and make her cry any more, and to please not let him have any more money to buy whisky. These petitions and many more were offered up most fervently, and Sandy’s thoughts

SANDY CAMERON.

were so absorbed in what he was saying that he did not notice at all how quiet the house had suddenly become, but went on and on asking God for that which he wanted, and putting the name of Jesus after almost every request. By and by a deep groan close beside him startled the boy, and he jumped from his knees. There stood the very person for whom he had been praying, his father. ‘‘Don’t be angry, father,” he said, going near him. He received no answer for a moment. Evidently the paroxysm of noisy rage had passed off. Presently the man’s voice, still husky, but from a different cause, said : “ Wee Sandy, kneel down there and say that prayer over again, and I will kneel beside ye and say ‘ Amen.’”

Sandy knelt with great joy, for he knew then that God was beginning already to answer him, and he prayed more earnestly and tenderly than before for a blessing on his father.

mother’s little man.

It was far into the night when Sandy and his father parted. They had passed hours together of prayer and communing which neither of them ever forgot. I wish I could say that it was the turning-point of Mr. Cameron’s life, and that he never again touched the poison which had wrought so much ill to himself and his family. I cannot do that, alas ! but I can say that he never again became so influenced by it as to treat his wife unkindly, and that often, when he took his hat from the peg, intending to spend an hour at the tavern, Sandy’s arm thrown around his neck and his whispered “Think of our prayer, father,” would change his purpose, and instead of an hour and all his ready money spent at the tavern, he would sit down with his wife and child, telling bits of the day’s news to the one and a fairy tale or a remembrance of his own boyhood to the other : thus giving joy instead of sorrow to those who loved him best.

Chapter III. The Picture On The Slate

WELVE years of Sandy Cameron’s life had passed along quietly enough. The only events that stood out in his memory as of great importance were the gaining of his precious “ Robinson Crusoe ” as a school prize and a two days’ visit to Leith, where he had gone with his mother some months before to attend the funeral of her only brother, his uncle John. At last something happened. When Sandy came home from school one afternoon, he found his mother sitting in the kitchen with an open letter in her hand. He took his little chair, and placing it at her feet, sat down to wait until she was ready to speak to him. Sandy’s imagination had 28

THE PICTURE ON THE SLATE.

time to do quite a bit of castle-building before the letter was finished. The ink seemed to be pale, for his mother had to take off her glasses twice and wipe them on the corner of her apron before she could decipher the whole of the letter. At last it was finished and carefully placed behind the clock, to be shown to Mr. Cameron when he should come in. Sandy waited what seemed to him a long time for his mother to take some notice of his presence. After she had put the letter aside she stood quite still, as if thinking, and with a mixture of pleasure and perplexity in her face that only increased the boy’s curiosity. At last he spoke: ‘‘Are ye no gaun to tell me, mother, aboot yer letter? Is it news frae America?”

“ No, laddie, not quite so far as that and as she spoke Mrs. Cameron took her seat again, drew Sandy to her, and began running her fingers through his thick auburn curls in a way that assured

SANDY CAMEEON.

the boy that something unusual had occurred, for his ever-busy mother never took time for such petting, except on Sunday afternoons, when he was wont to sit for hours with his head in her lap, while she played with his curls and told him Bible stories.

‘‘Sandy,’’ she said, “I doubt if you remember your sister Annie. She was married and went away to London when you were hardly more than a baby.”

“ Eh ! but I do, mother and Sandy raised his head to give a little emphatic nod. “ I mind well her grand husband that took me on his knee and offered me a sixpence if I would ca’ him ‘ Brother Henry,’ but I felt ’shamed, and jumped down an’ run away without saying a word : fule that I was to lose the chance o’ a sixpence in that way !”

Mrs. Cameron smiled. “ Poor lad !” she said ; “ you’ve had few sixpences to spend in your life and she stroked his hair tenderly.

THE PICTURE ON THE SLATE.

Sandy jumped up and kissed lier pale face. ‘‘ I did not say that to grieve you,” he said. “What need I care for sixpences, or guineas either, so long as I have the best mother in all Scotland ? But tell me now about the letter. I know that Mr. Carter died a good while ago. Has anything else happened to Sister Annie ?”

“ No, nothing has happened, but your sister writes that the physician has bidden her seek a change of air for her younger child, who has been ill, and has recommended her to spend some time among the Scotch hills. She will stop in Edinburgh a week or two for the sake of seeing us all, and she offers to take you with her for the summer jaunt if your father and I are willing. What do you think of that, my laddie?”

Sandy^s excitement was too great for his head to rest quietly on his mother’s lap. He sprang to his feet and began to whistle. He jumped about the floor.

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first on one foot, then on the other, and conducted himself for two or three minutes in a manner so utterly unlike his usual quiet behaviour that Mrs. Cameron was astonished. He came to a stop at last, and stood still before his mother’s chair like a toy engine that, having been wound up, has run itself entirely out, and asked with his eyes the question he was not calm enough to frame with his lips.

“ So you would like to go with your sister, eh, Sandy ?”

Like to go !” echoed Sandy. Oh my !” The occasion seemed to call for a grander word of exclamation than the boy could find in all his vocabulary ; and in sheer despair of getting one comprehensive enough to express his feelings, he had to come down to his accustomed Oh my !” Mrs. Cameron understood him and laughed :

‘‘Well, we will see about it. Your sister undertakes to bear the expenses of

THE PICTURE ON THE SPATE.

your journey, and all we have to do is to get you a nice suit of clothes. It would be a shame indeed if my little man had to miss so fine a chance o’ seein’ the warld for want o’ what one or twa poun’ ’ll buy.”

As the words broadened into Scotch upon her tongue tears glistened in her eyes — two signs that always went together when Mrs. Cameron’s heart was touched.

Not another word passed on the subject between mother and son for days. Sandy skipped about as if a set of springs had been placed in his legs. Whatever he was about — tliat is, when out of school — he was whistling ; and whatever the tune might be, one set of words formed the invariable accompaniment in his mind : ‘‘We will see about it.” He was not much of a talker, even when with boys of his own age, but such a grand series of events as the visit from his London sister and her children, and the probable journey to c

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follow, could not be kept secret very long. As he sat at liis desk one day, seeming very busy with bis sums, his neighbour, Ray Mackay, burst into a smothered laugh. This drew the attention of several boys sitting near, and all Ray could do was to point his finger at Sandy, who was working away with slate and pencil, but breathing very hard and puffing out his cheeks as if to blow the fire. Ray looked over his friend’s shoulder ; he could not believe that such excitement could be produced, even in such a studious boy as Sandy, by the working out of a sum. Then Ray’s mirth exploded in a loud He ! he ! he !” and before poor Sandy was fairly aroused from his reverie the teacher stood beside him holding out his liand for the slate. Sandy’s cheeks became redder than his curls, and Ray stammered out a speech meant to draw all the blame on himself and excuse his friend. But it was of no avail. Both boys received marks for

THE PICTURE ON THE SLATE.

misconduct, and were kept at tlieir seats an hour after the other scholars were dismissed. The slate, the silent cause of all this, contained a sum half finished, and beneath it a rough sketch of mountain scenery, with a train of cars in the foreground. At the bottom of the slate was represented a small boy, with one hand pointing to the cars and with the other clutching the skirt of a tall woman with spectacles, out of whose mouth issued the words, ‘‘We will see about it.”

When the boys were at last set at liberty, Kay, whose sorrow at being the means of bringing his friend into disgrace had entirely overcome his merriment, tried to make amends by offering to lend Sandy a book of fairy tales which he knew he wanted to read. He also asked for an explanation of the picture, for he said that must surely be like Pilgrim’s Progress — “a thing that looked plain enoo’ at first sicht, but that

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liad a nienin^ naebody could understan’ until it was explained.’’

Then Sandy told him about his sister’s letter and what a happy time he expected to have when she came ; but his face was so grave and his voice so husky that his companion looked at him in real perplexity, and asked how a fellow could feel so joyful and look so glum at the same time.

“ Indeed, I am glad, Ray, when I look ahead, but I’m nae sae joyful to-day at the thocht o’ bein’ disgraced in the sicht o’ the whole school. I dinna ken what mother ’ll say to it.”

An’ is that a’ ? Hech, laddie ! there’s mony a thing waur than a bad mark at school ; and if ye fear a scoldin’, dinna say a word to your mother about it.”

Sandy darted a surprised glance at his friend, and drew up his little figure with all the dignity he could command :

Is it possible, Ray Mackay, that it’s

THE PICTURE ON THE SLATE.

your voice I hear counselling me to tell my mother a lie ? That would be a disgrace indeed that I should never get over as long as I lived.^^

Kay in his turn drew himself up, and his face grew hot and angry : “ A lie, indeed!’’ He was just advising Sandy for his own good, he said, and here was all the thanks he got. To hold one’s tongue was not to tell a lie; he had never heard even a minister .say that much. Perhaps Sandy was thinking to turn preacher himself. If so, he had better save his sermon for Sunday, and ask the loan of the pulpit at St. Andrew’s to deliver it in.

You are laughing at me, Kay, and at the same time you are angry. I know you did not bid me tell a lie — you would not do it yoursel’ a bit sooner than I ; but when I go home days, I always tell mother aboot anything special that has happened, an’ so, if I said naught to-day aboot bein’ kept in and gettin’ the

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mark, you see yoursek it would be up and down a lie.”

Ray shook his head, and still looked angry.

‘‘I can’t help it, then,” said Sandy, turning away, with a sigh. I have told you the way that I look at it.”

After that there was a coolness between the two boys. Ray, who was a witty fellow, took every occasion of raising a laugh at Sandy Cameron’s expense, and Sandy kept in his heart a bitter and distrustful feeling toward his former friend. Nevertheless, Ray felt a real respect for the upright boy, and had he been in need of either advice or sympathy would have gone to Sandy Cameron for it sooner than to any other of his school-mates.