In the evenings when alone together, the old lady used to make him draw his low stool up close beside her knee and talk to her. She would even encourage him to tell her about life in what might well be called the lower regions of the great city of Glasgow.
The disinterested kindness of Mrs. Malony and poor Little Peter, the hunch-backed fiddler boy, visibly affected Jack's grandmother.
"I did not think," she said, "that the poor could be so kind to each other as that. I will send Mrs. Malony, and Peter too, a Christmas-box when the time comes round. And so they were going to make a blacksmith of my brave boy, were they?"
"Yes, grandma; but I love work."
"How terrible!"
Jack bent down to smooth an old grimalkin that snoozed upon the rug.
"Malony wasn't so very terrible, though," he said; "and I suppose, grandma, if nobody was a smithy-John, nobody's horses would have any shoes to wear."
"True, my dear, quite true. As the potter makes his wares, some to honour and some to dishonour, so are we too made, and we should do our duty in the station of life which God has appointed us to fill."
Jack didn't reply. He was gazing into the bright fire of peats and coal that blazed so cheerfully on the low hearth, and wondering what station in life it would be his to fill.
"Jack," she said, after a pause, "did it ever occur to you that you would like to be something?"