Niger

sistance : gravity (exaggerated till it was unduly
noticeable) of outward demeanour to hide the bur¬
geon of his soul beneath.
He was a handsome boy, as later a man, brown¬
haired, tall for his age, with finely cut nose and a
shapely if unaggressive chin. One may reconstruct
the Mungo of childhood and adolescence by modi¬
fying the well-known portrait and garbing it in
breeches and grey woollen stockings, giving it a
rounder face, and eyes surely with not that coldest of
gold glints in them. There were times in his early
life, no doubt, when he mislaid the gravity and
steadiness of demeanour so heartily approved by his
parents and contemporaries, and played the devil,
and romped, and tore his clothes, and lay on his
back and peered at the clouds and wondered on
God and birds and beasts and how babies really
came and were created, and why you shouldn’t
swear or scratch in the kirk. Nevertheless, there is
record of but one occasion when his defensive
armour slipped aside—and that almost certainly an
occasion neatly staged.
The occasion was an evening, Mungo grown to a
grave schoolboy, deep in books. The servant was
sweeping the floor and in the process sweeping up
great quantities of printed leaves torn from a book.
Mungo’s mother was in the room, and Mungo him¬
self. ‘ You’re destroying the book,’ Mungo pro¬
tested. The servant tossed her head : 4 They’re
only old Flavel’s.’ To which the dark-faced boy
retorted gravely, to the delight of all his bio-
14