homes at night I should have

"If the children had not been going to trusted to freedom alone. As it was the poor bairns were between two fires. I gave them freedom ... and their parents cursed me. One woman sent a verbal message to me to the effect that I was an idiot; one bright little lassie came to me one day with the words of the woman next door, 'It's just waste o' time attendin' that schule.' Do you imagine that all the child processes in the world could save a child from an environment like that?" When the American departed he held out his hand. "I came to see a reformer of child education," he said with a smile, "and I discover that you aren't a reformer of child education at all; your job in life is to run a school for parents."Chapter 9The school is closed for the Autumn Holiday ... commonly called the Tattie Holiday here. Macdonald has gone off to Glasgow. The bigger boys and girls are gathering potatoes in the fields here, and I am driving the tattie digger. At dinnertime they come to the bothy and eat their bread; Mrs. Thomson gives them soup and coffee in the kitchen, but they bring their bowls over to my bothy. Much of the fun has gone out of them; the constant bending makes them very tired, and they drop off to sleep very easily. Janet and Ellen lay in my bed all dinnertime yesterday and slept. Occasionally a boy will sing a song that always crops up at tattie time:—O! I'm blyde I'm at the tatties,