His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair.
A shade of sadness had fallen on Mrs Cameron's face.
"Well ... you—you won't get Davey to come home, or let me try?" she asked, her heart fainting at her own words.
"No." He repeated the word slowly as if in fear that his tongue would give effect to other stirrings of his brain. "Of his own will he went—of his own will he'll come back again."
"Would you have in like circumstances?" she asked.
He did not reply.
"He's our only one, Donald," she pleaded.
"He's my son. But what's the meaning of these?" he said, shuffling the handful of McNab's papers Davey had thrown down. "Did I ever make bills like this for myself? Haven't I worked and slaved year in and year out. Did I ever throw away roistering what he has?"
Mary looked at the bills. She had not seen them before.
"Oh," she said, slowly, "that's the bad blood of me in him. My people were all a spendthrift lot, and I've never been able to keep anything at all myself, whether it was love, or money, or a shawl, or even a spirit of my own to go through my life with."