CHAPTER XLV
TALK OF A LITTLE MAID SINCE GROWN TALL

Y scholars have a game they call “The
Little Minister,” in which the boys allow
the girls as a treat to join. Some of the charac-
ters in the real drama are omitted as of no
importance,— the dominie, for instance, — and
the two best fighters insist on being Dow and
Gavin. I notice that the game is finished when
Dow dives from a haystack, and Gavin and the
earl are dragged to the top of it by a rope.
Though there should be another scene, it is only
a marriage, which the girls have, therefore, to go
through without the help of the boys. This
warns me that I have come to an end of my
story for all- except my little maid. In the days
when she sat on my knee and listened it had no
end, for after I told her how her father and
mother were married a second time she would
say, “ And then I came, didn’t I? Oh, tell me
about me!” So it happened that when she was
no higher than my staff she knew more than I
could write in another book, and many a time
she solemnly told me what I had told her, as:
“Would you like me to tell you a story?
Well, it’s about a minister, and the people wanted
to be bad to him, and then there was a flood,
and a flood is lochs falling instead of rain, and
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