Nor had he ever regularly attended any school. There were no schools to speak of near any of the garrisons at which his father was stationed; but Dr. Graham was a man of scholarly tastes, a graduate of a famous university in Scotland, and one who by faithful study kept abreast of the leading minds in his profession. People generally led a very healthful open-air life on the broad Western frontier, and Dr. Graham had few patients to claim his time. He planned, therefore, all the studies for his two boys, he himself hearing them recite in history, geography, and arithmetic, while their devoted mother, at whose knee they had successively learned their A B C's, and whose fragile white hand had guided their chubby fists in the tracing of their first pot-hooks, was their instructor in the other rudiments.
Regularly, five mornings a week, the little fellows were set at their books right after guard-mounting, and, with brief intermission, worked until the bugles sounded "orderly call," or the drums and fifes merrily played "Roast Beef of Old England" at noon. No wonder they learned to welcome that call. Then they had their frugal luncheon. The doctor was a stanch Scotchman, who believed that boyish brawn and brain throve better on "parritch" and milk than on any other pabulum. Think of boys who never knew the taste of candy until after they were twelve—to whom hot biscuit was forbidden, and tea and coffee tabooed! They grew up ruddy-cheeked, freckle-faced, clear-eyed, sturdy-limbed, burly young "Hielanders," with marvellous capacity for solid food, sound sleep, and active sports. They were better taught than most of the other children around the garrisons, for what they knew they knew well. The three years' difference in their ages gave "Pops," of course, too much advantage in their boyish tiffs and scuffles; for boys will romp and wrestle, just as puppies play and kittens frolic, and these, starting in fun, close sometimes in fury; but they forget the feud as quickly as it was begun. Pops learned at an early age the lesson of self-restraint, the law of forbearance towards the younger and weaker brother. It was not learned intuitively, perhaps, but rather the reverse. The doctor was of a famous old Scotch Presbyterian clan, with a wholesome faith in Calvin and the doctrine of original sin. His gentle wife had thought to convert her eldest hope by appeals to his finer nature, but the doctor held that there was just so much of the "thrawn deevil" in every boy that had to be trounced out of him. It was all very well for Pops to tussle with his Apache playmate, and come home covered with dirt and bumps and glory, and explosive with tremendous tales of his personal valor—Pops would brag when he was young, and many another boy would have done the same under like conditions—but he was too big and strong for "Buddie;" and so when Bud came roaring in one day to tell how "Pops fwowed me down and hit me," Pops owned up that it was true. Bud _would_ meddle with what he and Dick were trying to make, and he "just pushed him away." Mamma gravely admonished; but papa gave warning. It happened again before very long, and this time the doctor took Pops into his den, and presently poor Mrs. Graham ran to the dining-room and covered her ears, and Buddie howled in sudden revulsion of feeling. The doctor seldom punished, but what his right hand found to do he did with all his might.