But I must stop, for I am getting up
to the neck in a bog of discrimination. As if I did not know the
nobility of some townspeople, compared with the worldliness of some
country folk. I give it up. We are all good and all bad. God mend
all. Nothing will do for Jew or Gentile, Frenchman or Englishman,
Negro or Circassian, town boy or country boy, but the kingdom of
heaven which is within him, and must come thence to the outside of
him.
To a boy like Robert the changes of every day, from country to town
with the gay morning, from town to country with the sober
evening--for country as Rothieden might be to Edinburgh, much more
was Bodyfauld country to Rothieden--were a source of boundless
delight. Instead of houses, he saw the horizon; instead of streets
or walled gardens, he roamed over fields bathed in sunlight and
wind. Here it was good to get up before the sun, for then he could
see the sun get up. And of all things those evening shadows
lengthening out over the grassy wildernesses--for fields of a very
moderate size appeared such to an imagination ever ready at the
smallest hint to ascend its solemn throne--were a deepening marvel.
Town to country is what a ceiling is to a c?lum.
CHAPTER XVII.
ADVENTURES.
Grannie's first action every evening, the moment the boys entered
the room, was to glance up at the clock, that she might see whether
they had arrived in reasonable time. This was not pleasant, because
it admonished Robert how impossible it was for him to have a lesson
on his own violin so long as the visit to Bodyfauld lasted.
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