From Ploughshare to Pulpit by Gordon Stables

When Sandie awoke again, he felt so much fresher, lightsomer, and better, and was admitted by the doctor to be so far recovered that he was permitted to sit up a little and engage in conversation with his mother and gentle little nurse, Maggie May.

The latter interested Sandie very much indeed. He had never before seen a child-girl half so lovely. To him she was idyllic, a poem, a dream-child. It seemed to this romantic ploughboy-student as if Maggie May -- what a sweet name, too! -- had flown straight out from the pages of Anacreon.

Of course there may have been a good deal of super-sentimentality about all this, for the mind is always more sensitive when the body is feeble and weak; and weak Sandie still was, and would be for many a day. However, it may be confessed, before we go any farther, that Maggie May was an innocent, artless, and a very beautiful child.

I have myself an opinion that no girl can be really beautiful who is not truly good, whose heart is not imbued with religion and in touch with nature. If the soul, in all truthfulness, does not shine through the eyes, be they brown or be they blue, then, ah! me, beauty is far, far away. And yet many girls now-a-days think that the more closely they approach in figure, face, and complexion to the waxen dummies we see in the windows of hairdressers the prettier they must be. A greater mistake could not be made. Let me say earnestly to every girl who may read these lines, "Cultivate mind and soul if you wish to become beautiful."

This is a digression, and I apologise for it, and proceed with my true story.

A day or two afterwards, Sandie's sister came over to the manse, and the mother went home.

Maggie May and she soon became fast friends, and together it was evident they would soon nurse Sandie back to life.

Maggie May possessed a zither, on which, for so young a girl, she played charmingly, singing thereto old Scotch songs, such as "The Flowers of the Forest," "The Parting," "Wae's me for Prince Charlie," and other Jacobite lilts, that caused the tears to come welling up into Sandie's eyes till he could see nothing for the mist they produced; for Sandie was still very weak and hysterical.

The minister came daily, twice a day, to see the patient. One day he brought Sandie's Horace.

"Do you mean to tell me, Sandie," said the minister, "that you read Latin?"

"Oh, yes, just a little. And a little Greek," he added.

Mackenzie patted his thin white hand, and looked wonderingly down into his pinched and worn face.

From that moment Sandie knew he had found a friend.

Then he told him all -- all his ambitions, all his struggles, and all his doubts and fears.

Mackenzie was silent for a time after he had ceased speaking. Then he took Sandie's hand in his. "Listen! " he said. "I was a bursar at my University, or I would not be where I am now, for my people were only fisher-folks at Peterhead. I was a bursar, and I have ever since kept up my classics. Now, I can put you in the way of working up for the Grand Competition at the end of October, if you care to come over here about twice or thrice a week."

Once more came that wildering mist of tears to Sandie's weak eyes. "The Lord be praised and you be thanked," he said, pressing Mackenzie's hand. "He has raised me up a friend, and I am more happy now and hopeful than I have ever been in life."

For another whole week Sandie was still so weak as to be unable to leave his room; then he was able to totter out into the minister's garden, and seat himself on the summer-seat, in the warm spring sunshine, in the healthful bracing breath of the sweetest month in all the year.

Maggie May went with him, and sat near him, and read to him little stories, in which he pretended to take great interest, though it really was the story-teller, not the story, he was studying all the time. Soon after his first out-going, young blood began to assert itself, and he somehow felt ashamed of being ill or a patient. He was getting rapidly stronger, at all events, and one morning announced his intention of going home. The minister knew it would be useless to argue with him. Genius is wilful, and there was every probability even now that Sandie would eventually prove that he possessed genius. "What is genius after all," said somebody, or words to this effect, "but the capability of plodding and steady work? " I am certainly not prepared to agree with this. Genius depends greatly on brain power and brain formation. I never would expect much except a grunt from a sow, however much she applied herself to study.

Sandie went home. The spring and merry May were now almost gone. The joy of June would soon be here. The men, and even Jeannie, the simple servant lassie, were busily engaged thinning the young turnips. As Sandie drove slowly down the loanings in the gig, he could hear their merry voices as they talked and laughed, with now and then Jeannie's gentle voice raised in song, to which Jamie appended a deep broad bass. The horses were still in the fields as he had seen them last -- Glancer nibbling the shoulder of Tippet, Tippet nibbling that of Glancer, the best proof one horse can give his fellow that he loves and respects him.

The banks by the dike and ditch-sides were now all ablaze with the most charming wild-flowers. I might be accused of making copy were I to mention the half of them; but on the water itself floated the spotlessly white water-anemone and the wild forget-me-not. On the banks near by nodded the crimson ragged-robin and blood-red selené. They seemed to be looking at and admiring their own sweet faces reflected from the pools beneath. But the banks were also patched with sky-blue speedwells, starred over with great, solemn-looking, oxeye daisies, and backed by a profusion of the tall and lordly purple orchis.