“Whatna for?”
“I needna say the words.”
“I’ll say them for you—you thought he would be ashamed o’ you.”
“Ay, he might hae been. Dinna cry, woman. Dear, dear woman, dinna cry! It’s our ain fault—our ain fault. If we had stood firm for the pulpit, if we had said, ‘you must be either a preacher or a schoolmaster,’ this wouldna hae been. We were bent on makin’ a gentleman o’ him, and now he prefers gentlemen to fishermen—we ought to hae expectit it.”
“It is cruel, shamefu’, ungratefu’ as it can be!”
“Ay, but the lad is only seeking his ain good. If he still foregathered wi’ our rough fisher-lads, we wouldn’t like it. And we would tell him sae.”
“He might hae found time to rin down, and see us for an hour or twa, and gie us the reasons for this, and that.”
“He looked like he was courting the young lady—and we know of auld times, wife, that when our lads began courting, we hed to come after. I was wrang to gie in to his studying the law. Studying the gospels, he wad hae learned that there are neither rich nor poor, in God’s sight. We gave the lad to God, and then we took him awa’ frae God, and would mak’ a lawyer and a gentleman o’ him. Weel, as far as I can see, he is going to be a’ we intended. We are getting what we hae worked for. There’s nane to blame but oursel’s.”
This reasoning quite silenced Margot. She considered it constantly, and finally came to her husband’s opinion. Then she would not talk about Neil, either one way, or the other, and it soon fell 168 out that the lad’s name was never mentioned in the home where he had once ruled almost despotically. Only Christine kept her faith in Neil. She wrote him long letters constantly. She told him all that was going on in the village, all about his father and mother, the Domine and the school house. She recalled pleasant little incidents of the past, and prefigured a future when she would see him every day. And she seldom named little Jamie. She divined that Neil was jealous of the position the child had gained in the household. And Christine was no trouble-maker. Her letters were all messages of peace and good will, and without any advice from her father she had personally come to very much the same conclusion that he had arrived at. “There has been a great mistake,” she said softly to herself, “and we be to mak’ the best o’ it. It isna beyond God’s power to sort it right yet.”