“Alister McDonald will be doing great things some day, I’m sure!” he said to himself. “He’s full of most wonderful ideas about killing all the country’s enemies!”
And while he thus pored over his book and thought, his mother opened his poor little letter to Miss Leslie (“For it is a mother’s duty!” she said to herself, to excuse her dishonourable act to a trusting child) and read every word two or three times over. She had of course never intended it to be posted, and when she had gone into the hall to apparently give the servant all the letters for the post, she had kept it back and quietly slipped it into her pocket. As she now perused it, her whole large figure swelled with the “noble matron’s” indignation.
“What a wicked old thing that Leslie woman must be!” she exclaimed,—“A perfect mischief-maker!—she has poisoned my son’s mind! He would evidently run away to her if he could! How fortunate it is that I have intercepted this letter! Not that it matters much, because of course I should have soon put a stop to the old maid’s nonsense, and Boy’s too. Stupid child! But it isn’t his fault, poor darling—it’s the fault of that conceited old thing who has put all these foolish notions into his head. Really, a mother has to be always on her guard!”
With which sagacious observation, she posted Boy’s letter to his “deer frend” into the fire. Then, satisfied that she “had done a mother’s duty,” she called Boy, and asked him if he would like a game of draughts with her. He nodded a glad assent, and as he brought out the board and set the pieces, he looked so bright and animated that his mother “swelled” towards him as it were, and shed one of her slowest, fattest smiles upon him.
“I shall be very lonely without you, Boy!” she said plaintively,—“No nice little son to play draughts with me! But it’s for your good, I know, and a mother must always sacrifice herself for her children.”
She sighed in bland self-admiration, but Boy, not being able to argue on the duties of mothers, had already made his first move on the draught-board, so she had to resign herself with as good a grace as she could to the game, which she had only proposed by way of a ruse to take Boy’s mind off any further possibility of its dwelling on the subject of his letter to Miss Leslie.
But Boy thought of it all the same, though he said nothing. Day after day he waited anxiously for a reply,—and when none came, his little face grew paler, and his brows contracted the habit of frowning. One morning when his mother was just opening some letters of her own which had arrived by the first delivery, she looked up and said smilingly,—
“Have you heard from Miss Letty yet, Boy?”
Boy looked at her with a straight fearless glance, which, had she been a little less mean and treacherous and poor of soul than she was, might have made her wince.
“No, mother!”