“—Davie, poor boy—he is my anxiety!” resumed the earl, in his former condescendingly friendly, half sleepy tone. “What to do with him, I have not yet succeeded in determining. If the church of Scotland were episcopal now, we might put him into that: he would be an honour to it! But as it has no dignities to confer, it is not the place for one of his birth and social position. A few shabby hundreds a year, and the associations he would necessarily be thrown into!—However honourable the profession in itself!” he added, with a bow to Donal, apparently unable to get it out of his head that he had an embryo-clergyman before him.
“Davie is not quite a man yet,” said Donal; “and by the time he begins to think of a profession, he will, I trust, be fit to make a choice: the boy has a great deal of common sense. If your lordship will pardon me, I cannot help thinking there is no need to trouble about him.”
“It is very well for one in your position to think in that way, Mr. Grant! Men like you are free to choose; you may make your bread as you please. But men in our position are greatly limited in their choice; the paths open to them are few. Tradition oppresses us. We are slaves to the dead and buried. I could well wish I had been born in your humbler but in truth less contracted sphere. Certain rôles are not open to you, to be sure; but your life in the open air, following your sheep, and dreaming all things beautiful and grand in the world beyond you, is entrancing. It is the life to make a poet!”
“Or a king!” thought Donal. “But the earl would have made a discontented shepherd!”
The man who is not content where he is, would never have been content somewhere else, though he might have complained less.
“Take another glass of wine, Mr. Grant,” said his lordship, filling his own from the other decanter. “Try this; I believe you will like it better.”
“In truth, my lord,” answered Donal, “I have drunk so little wine that I do not know one sort from another.”
“You know whisky better, I daresay! Would you like some now? Touch the bell behind you.”
“No, thank you, my lord; I know as little about whisky: my mother would never let us even taste it, and I have never tasted it.”
“A new taste is a gain to the being.”