When Mac came back I said to him; "You"ve got a fine lot of bairns, Mac."

"Had you any difficulty?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I half thought they would try to pull your leg, especially a boy like Tom Murray. He is a most difficult chap, you know."

"Tom"s a saint," I said; "every child is a saint if you treat him as an equal. No, I had no difficulty, but I want you to send over Geordie Wylie to me this afternoon. There is something wrong with that boy; he has no ambition and he has one of the worst inferiority complexes I have ever struck. I want to have a quiet talk with him."

Mac promised, and at three o"clock Geordie came over to the schoolhouse.

I took him into the parlour, and he sat nervously on the edge of a chair.

"Tell me about yourself, Geordie," I said, but he did not answer.

"Do you keep rabbits?"

"Aye."

"What kind?"

"Twa Himalayas and a half Patty."

"Keep doos?"

"No."

It was like drawing blood from a milestone.

"What do you do when you go home at nights?"

It was a long difficult task to get anything out of him. The only fact of value I got was that he was a great reader of Wild West stories. I asked him to come to me again, and he said he would.

To-night I asked Mac about him.

"He"s a dreamer," said Mac, "and he"s lazy. I am always strapping him for inattention. He"s not a manly boy, never plays games, always stands in a corner of the playground."

"Does he ever fight?" I asked.

"He"s a great coward, but there"s one queer thing about him; when any boy challenges him to fight he goes white about the gills but he always fights . . . and gets licked."

"Mac," I said, "will you do me a favour? Don"t whack him again; it is the worst treatment you can give him. He is a poor wee chap, and he is badly in need of real help."

"All right," said the kindly Mac, "I"ll try not to touch him, but he irritates me many a time."

I had Geordie for an hour this morning. He was taciturn at first, but later he talked freely. He is very much afraid of his father, and he weeps when his father scolds him. This makes the father angrier and he calls Geordie a la.s.sie, a greetin" la.s.sie. This jeer wounds the boy deeply. He is afraid in the dark. He told me that he was puzzled about one thing; when he goes for his milk at night he is never afraid on the outward journey, but when he leaves the dairy to come home he is always in terror. I asked him what he was afraid of and he told me that he always imagined that there was a man in a cheese-cutter cap waiting to murder him.

"What is a cheese-cutter?" I asked.

"It is a bonnet with a big snout, something like a railway porter"s. My father"s a porter and he has ane."

Evidently the man he is afraid of is his father. This may account for his lack of fear when he is walking from his home to the dairy. Then he is leaving his father; when he starts to return he is going back to his father and is afraid.

I asked him about his fights with other boys. He always feared a fight but he went through with it so that the other boys should not call him a coward. Naturally he always lost the battle; he fought with a divided mind; while his less imaginative opponent thought only of hitting and winning, Geordie was picturing the end of the fight.

I asked him if he had a sweetheart, and he blushed deeply. He told me that he often took fancies for girls, but they would not have him. Frank Murray always cut him out; Frank was a big hefty lad and the girls like the beefy manly boy.

He does much day-dreaming, phantasying it is called in a.n.a.lysis. His dreams always take the form of conquests; in his day-dream he is the best fighter in the school, the best scholar, the most loved of the girls.

His night dreams are often terrifying, and he has more than once dreamt that his father and Macdonald were dead. He finds compensation for his weaknesses in his day-dreams and his reading. He likes tales of heroes who always kill the villians and carry off the heroines.

It is difficult to know what to do in a case like this. The best way would be to change the boy"s environment, but that is out of the question. Even then the early fears would go with him; he would transfer his father-complex to another man.

I tried to explain to Mac the condition of Geordie. The boy is all bottled up; his energy should be going into play and work, but instead it is regressing, going back to early ways of adaptation to environment.

"But what can I do with him?" asked Mac.

"Give him your love," I said. "He fears you now, and your att.i.tude to him makes him worse. You must never punish him again, Mac."

"That"s all very well," said Mac ruefully, "but what am I to do? Suppose Tom Murray and he talk during a lesson, am I to whack Tom and allow Geordie to get off?"

"Chuck punishment altogether," I said. "You don"t need it; it is always the resort of a weak teacher."

"I couldn"t do without it," he said.

"All right then," I said wearily, "but I want you to realise that your punishments are making Geordie a cripple for life."

I went down and had a talk with Geordie"s father. He was not very pleasant about it; indeed he was almost unpleasant.

"There"s nothing wrong wi" the laddie," he said aggressively. "He"s a wee bit la.s.sie-like and he has no pluck."

Here Geordie entered the kitchen, and his father turned on him harshly.

"Started to yer lessons yet?" he demanded.

Geordie muttered something about having had to feed his rabbits.

"I"ll rabbit ye! Get yer books oot this minute!" and Geordie crept to a corner and rummaged among some old clothes for his school-bag.

I tried to be as amiable as I could, and avoided controversy. I soon saw that father and mother were not pulling well together, and I suspected that the father"s harshness to Geordie was often a weapon to wound the fond mother. I saw that nothing I could say would do any good, and I took my departure.

Later I went to see Dauvit, and found him alone. I asked him to tell me about the Wylies.

"Tarn Wylie is wan o" the stupidest men in a ten mile radius," said Dauvit. "But he"s no stupid whaur money is concerned; they tell me that he drinks aboot half his week"s wages, and his puir wife has to suffer.

That laddie o" theirs, he was born afore the marriage, and they tell me that Tarn wud never ha" married her if he hadna been fell drunk the nicht he put in the banns."