They had hardly reached the stairs before the clerk caught up to them. “Mr. McKenzie has changed his mind,” he exclaimed. “He will see you if ye’ll come back with me.”
A minute later they were ushered into the private office and stood facing the man—Alec’s brother—who in bitterness and unreasonable pride had kept himself aloof from them for eighteen years.
He was seated before a large table littered with papers and books—a hard-visaged, stiff-mouthed man, pallid-faced and stern-looking. His thin hair straggled over his forehead, unkempt, and he sat back in his chair with his head hunched into his collar, his clean-shaven chin sunk into his chest, and regarded the McKenzies through steel-rimmed spectacles with searching, unfriendly eyes.
There were two chairs in the office and he indicated one with his hand. “Sit doon, madam!” he said in a harsh voice. “The boy can stand!” And he glanced sternly at his brother’s son.
Donald stood up with his hat in his hand and stared at his uncle with feelings of resentment and dislike bubbling within him. It was difficult for him to believe that this hard-faced ship-broker and his laughing, rollicking, blue-eyed daddy were of the same blood and born of the same mother.
McKenzie spoke and his voice burred with Scottish accent and grated like a saw on iron. “What d’ye want me to do for ye, madam? Ye’ve come to me wanting something, or I’ve missed my guess!”
Donald could notice a look as of pain cross his mother’s face as she nervously twisted her black-gloved fingers. She looked old that morning. “I’ve come to see if you can do anything to help Donald—my boy here,” she said, a trifle nervously.
“In what way?” rasped the ship-broker.
“Well, sir,” continued Mrs. McKenzie, “he has a natural talent for drawing, and it was Alec’s wish that Donald become an architect, and it was our intention to put him through College, but, as you know, my husband went”—here she faltered—“and—and—I—I was unable to give him the schooling necessary. I—I thought, that, maybe for Alec’s sake, you would help Donald in some way and put him through school for an architectural training.”
David McKenzie listened unemotionally. “Humph!” he grunted, then with his searching eyes on Janet, he enquired in the manner of a prosecutor: