Donal was coming round the side of the stack, and heard what she said. It pleased him, for it was not a little in his own style.
“What makes a thing your own, do you think, Davie?” she went on.
“To be able to do with it what you like,” replied Davie.
“Whether that be good or bad?”
“Yes, I think so,” answered Davie, doubtfully.
“Then I think you are quite wrong,” she rejoined. “The moment you begin to use a thing wrong, that moment you make it less yours. I can’t quite explain it, but that is how it looks to me.”
She ceased, and after a moment Donal took up the question.
“Lady Arctura is quite right, Davie,” he said. “The nature, that is the good of a thing, is that only by which it can be possessed. Any other possession is like slave-owning; it is not a righteous having. The right and the power to use it to its true purpose, and the using it so, are the conditions that make a thing ours. To have the right and the power, and not use it so, would be to make the thing less ours than anybody’s.—Suppose you had a very beautiful picture, but from some defect in your sight you could never see that picture as it really was, while a servant in your house not only saw it as it was meant to be seen, but had such delight in gazing on it, that even in his dreams it came to him, and made him think of things he would not have thought of but for it:—which of you, you or the servant in your house, would have the more real possession of that picture? You could sell it away from yourself, and never know anything about it more; but you could not by all the power of a tyrant take it from your servant.”
“Ah, now I understand!” said Davie, with a look at lady Arctura which seemed to say, “You see how Mr. Grant can make me understand!”
“I wonder,” said lady Arctura, “what that curious opening in the side of the chimney-stack means! It can’t be for smoke to come out at!”