Old Mrs. Mackenzie had a woman's heart then, after all.
* * * * *
What a long, delightful letter that was Jack wrote to his mother and sister next day! It did both their hearts good.
Mrs. Mackenzie, junior, was glad, for her boy's sake, that he had found a friend that would advance him in life. For her own part, she would have died at the foot of a pine tree rather than accept a favour from the proud owner of Drumglen, albeit she was her late husband's mother.
Ah! pride, and especially Scotch pride, is a bitter feeling, and often even a cruel. Pride has been called the devil's darling sin, and by Pope
"The never-failing vice of fools."
Says Goldsmith,—
"Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of humankind pass by."
Well, I do believe that with Grandam Mackenzie the stream of life now began to run backwards for a time. She had invited Jack to stay but for a week or two; but the sweet summer-time was coming on, and the boy required no second invitation to make Drumglen his home for a time. The words "for a time" are Mrs. Mackenzie's own, and perhaps she hardly knew the full meaning of them herself.
Jack wasn't going to forget old friends, however, and he wrote to Mrs. Malony, and to Little Peter also, and promised to write again.