I could see all the Island respect for learning in the poor old lady's deference. Mac left us, and his mother asked if I would not have some tea. I refused the tea, giving as excuse that it was so close to the hour of the evening meal.
"So, you knew my son at college?" said the mother.
"I knew him well, Mrs. McKinney. He was my dearest friend."
The old lady began to cry softly.
"I am so sorry," she said, "that he failed in his examinations, and yet, I ought to be glad, I suppose, for it is a comfort to have him. Ellie is a cripple and without Alec what would we do? Of course, if he hadn't failed, I couldn't hope to keep him, so it is better, perhaps, as it is. But he was such a smart boy and so anxious to get on. It was a great disappointment to him; and then, of course, none of us liked to have the neighbors know that the boy was not cut out for something better than a farmer. But you must have liked him, when you came all the way from New York to see him."
I began to understand.
That night I thought it all out in my little room, with the flies buzzing around me and the four big posts standing guard over a feather bed, into which I sank and disappeared. I was prepared to face Mac in the morning.
He had already done a good day's work in the fields, before I was up for breakfast, so we went into the garden to thresh it out.
"Mac," I said severely, "did you tell your mother and sister and the people around here that you had failed in your examinations?"
"Well, Bruce," he said haltingly, "I did not exactly tell them that, but I let them think it."