“You are thankful for small mercies,” he said, “and gratitude is a rare thing in the profession. But I like you, lad, and am glad to have you as a chum. You shall not have cause to be ashamed of me.”
And so throughout the strange vicissitudes of the Scotch tour these two oddly-contrasting characters bore each other company, and for some time Myra Kay kept aloof from them both.
CHAPTER XII
“All these anxieties will be good for you. They all go to the making of a man—calling out that God-dependence in him which is the only true self-dependence, the only true strength.”—Letters of Charles Kingsley.
During the first month Theophilus Skoot’s Company prospered as well as could be expected. A week at Glasgow and a week at Edinburgh, with full houses, cheered every one; but after that, as they went northward, the days of dearth began. It was now past the middle of March, and the old proverb,
“As the light lengthens
The cold strengthens,”
was fulfilling itself in very bitter fashion. Perhaps people were disinclined to turn out of their comfortable homes on such bleak evenings; at any rate, the week at Stirling proved a dead failure, and Perth was wrestling with the influenza demon, and had little leisure to bestow on strolling players.