She had kept him at the parish school until he was fifteen, and
he had learned all that his master knew; and in three years more, by
rising early and sitting late at her daily toils, and the savings of his
field labour and occasional teaching, she was enabled to make
preparation for sending him to Edinburgh. Never did her wheel spin so
blithely since her husband was taken from her side, as when she put the
first lint upon the rock for his college sarks. Proudly did she show to
her neighbours her double spinel yarn--observing, "It's nae finer than
he deserves, poor fallow, for he'll pay me back some day." The web was
bleached and the shirts made by her own hands; and the day of his
departure arrived. It was a day of joy mingled with anguish. He attended
the classes regularly and faithfully; and truly as St. Giles's marked
the hour, the long, lean figure of Thomas Jeffrey, in a suit of shabby
black, and half a dozen volumes under his arm, was seen issuing from his
garret in the West Bow, darting down the frail stair with the velocity
of a shadow, measuring the Lawnmarket and High Street with gigantic
strides, gliding like a ghost up the South Bridge, and sailing through
the Gothic archway of the College, till the punctual student was lost in
its inner chambers.
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