"Perhaps, also, you have destroyed his happiness. Everyone has their own kind of happiness, but you want everyone to be happy in your way or not be happy at all. I call that even down selfishness. Ian, you have made a great blunder. I only hope it will not be followed by a great penalty."
"Blunder! Yes, if it be a blunder to take a man out of temptation and put him under the best of influences."
"You think college life the best of influences?"
"It is better than wandering about the country as a musician, however clever he is, must do."
"But Donald likes wandering. He wants to see the wide world over."
"A roving life, Jessy, leads to wavering principles. How can a man be religious who has no settled church? Already, Donald disbelieves in the creed his father preaches, and a man without a creed is a loose-at-ends Christian. General scepticism will succeed it, and scepticism poisons all the wells of life and undermines the foundations of morality."
"Donald is no sceptic. He is a God-loving, God-fearing lad. You'll be to excuse me now. I have a sore headache and I want to be alone."
So she went to her room and Dr. Macrae was much annoyed at her air of injury and sorrow.
"Your aunt is fretting about Donald," he said. "Donald has behaved very cruelly to me, Marion. I suppose you know how."
"About college, Father?"