“She didn’t say so!”
“No, but I understood it. Perhaps I am touchy; I don’t think I am ungrateful. They have always made you like one of themselves.”
“Yes, so much that I don’t like to run counter to their wishes when they have taken such pains. Besides, there are things that can be thought of, even by a poor man, as a soldier, which can’t in the other line.”
This speech, made with bent head, rising colour, and hand playing with his mother’s fan, gave her, all unwittingly on his part, a keen sense that her Jock was indeed passing from her, but she said nothing to damp his spirits, and threw herself heartily into his plans, announcing them to his uncle with genuine exultation. To this the Colonel fully responded, telling Jock that he would have given the world thirty years ago for such a chance, and commending him for thus getting off his mother’s hands.
“I only wish the rest of you were doing the same,” he said, “but each one seems to think himself the first person to be thought of, and her the last.”
“The Colonel’s wish seemed in course of fulfilment, for when Lucas went a few days later to his brother Robert’s rooms, he found him collecting testimonials for his fitness to act as Vice-principal to a European college at Yokohama for the higher education of the Japanese.
“Mother has not heard of it,” said Jock.
“She need not till it is settled,” answered Bobus. “It will save her trouble with her clerical friends if she only knows too late for a protest.”
Jock understood when he saw the stipulations against religious teaching, and recognised in the Principal’s name an essayist whose negations of faith had made some stir. However, he only said, “It will be rather a blow.”
“There are limits to all things,” replied Bobus. “The truest kindness to her is to get afloat away from the family raft as speedily as possible. She has quite enough to drag her down.”