Donal would have had him go down and spend a day, every now and then, with him and the nowt, as in old times--so soon the times grow old to the young!--but Janet would not hear of it, until the foolish tale of the brownie should have quite blown over.
"Eh, but I wuss," she added, as she said so, "I cud win at something aboot his fowk, or aiven whaur he cam frae, or what they ca'd him! Never ae word has the cratur spoken!" "Ye sud learn him to read, mither," said Donal.
"Hoo wad I du that, laddie?
I wad hae to learn him to speyk first," returned Janet.
"Lat him come doon to me, an' I'll try my han'," said Donal.
Janet, notwithstanding, persisted in her refusal--for the present.
By Donal's words set thinking of the matter, however, she now pondered the question day after day, how she might teach him to read; and at last the idea dawned upon her to substitute writing for speech.
She took the Shorter Catechism, which, in those days, had always an alphabet as janitor to the gates of its mysteries--who, with the catechism as a consequence even dimly foreboded, would even have learned it ?--and showed Gibbie the letters, naming each several times, and going over them repeatedly.

Then she gave him Donal's school-slate, with a sklet-pike, and said, "Noo, mak a muckle A, cratur." Gibbie did so, and well too: she found that already he knew about half the letters.
"He 's no fule!" she said to herself in triumph.
The other half soon followed; and she then began to show him words--not in the Catechism, but in the New Testament.

Having told him what any word was, and led him to consider the letters composing it, she would desire him to make it on the slate, and he would do so with tolerable accuracy: she was not very severe about the spelling, if only it was plain he knew the word.

Ere long he began to devise short ways of making the letters, and soon wrote with remarkable facility in a character modified from the printed letters.

When at length Janet saw him take the book by himself, and sit pondering over it, she had not a doubt he was understanding it, and her heart leapt for joy.