"Ho, ho, young man!" cried a voice.
Donal looked, and saw a man in the garb of a clergyman regarding him
from the road, and wiping his face with his sleeve.
"You should mind," he continued, "how you scatter your favours."
"I beg your pardon, sir," said Donal, taking off his cap again; "I
hadna a notion there was leevin' cratur near me."
"It's a fine day!" said the minister.
"It is that, sir!" answered Donal.
"Which way are you going?" asked the minister, adding, as if in
apology for his seeming curiosity, "--You're a scholar, I
see!"--with a glance towards the book he had left open on his stone.
"Nae sae muckle as I wad fain be, sir," answered Donal--then called
to mind a resolve he had made to speak English for the future.
"A modest youth, I see!" returned the clergyman; but Donal hardly
liked the tone in which he said it.
"That depends on what you mean by a scholar," he said.
"Oh!" answered the minister, not thinking much about his reply, but
in a bantering humour willing to draw the lad out, "the learned man
modestly calls himself a scholar."
"Then there was no modesty in saying I was not so much of a scholar
as I should like to be; every scholar would say the same."
"A very good answer!" said the clergyman patronizingly, "You'll be a
learned man some day!" And he smiled as he said it.
"When would you call a man learned?" asked Donal.
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