Page:Authors daughter v1.djvu/139

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THE YOUNG TEACHER.
135

"I am so young," said she; "I wonder you can trust me; but as I want to learn to teach so that I may be independent, I am very glad you will try me."

"And it will be a great saving to me if you succeed wi' the lassies," said Hugh Lindsay, "an' a pleasure to them besides. And if ye can give them your skill at the piano or the half o't, its more than we ever expected of the schoolmistress in the town."

"There's mony things that it seems to behove young folk to learn now-a-days, that was never thocht of when their father and me were at the schule. There was the reading and the writing, and a sma' matter o' counting, and the questions we learned;—but what wi' the piano, and the geography, and the grammar, and a wheen things they call roots, that are a sair fash to the brains to learn a' on the top o' the plain branches, I'm thinking ye'll have your hands full, Amy, my woman. They're no to call downright stupid, but they are no sae quick in the uptake as Allan," said Mrs. Lindsay.

"I should really like to try," said Amy. "I will be a beginning for that work my poor father thought I might in time be able to do."

"And if they're fashious and dinna mind ye, you maun jus call in Allan, for they'll aye mind