He most carefully examined our ploughboy-student, then he said to him—
“You’re a sensible youth, so I can speak to you straight. If you can get away to sunnier climes for a year, including a long sea-voyage in a sailing ship, you’ll return as hard as a hunter. If you don’t do this, you are booked for the other side of Jordan.”
The rough but kindly doctor told his mother the same, and she began to cry.
“Oh,” she moaned, “if my boy goes to sea, I shall never never see him more!”
“Tuts! woman, don’t be a fool. I tell you it is his only chance. You are bound to let him go—so there!”
. . . . . .
There was that sum of £120 lying untouched in the bank, and this Sandie determined to devote to the payment of his expenses. If it pleased God, he said to himself, to bring him back from sea safe and well, he would be able by teaching to make enough to pay his divinity classes.
So he commenced at once to get ready his outfit.
There was a hopeful pleasure in even this, and while so engaged Sandie believed himself getting better already.
The parting from his parents and Elsie, and from Maggie May and the minister, would, he knew, be painful enough, but then there was Hope to sit up aloft and breathe the flattering tale.