“Eh!” she cried, in mere excess of emotion, able for nothing but a monosyllable. The very imperfection of it gave it weight in Mrs. Glen’s unpractised eyes. “Losh me!” she cried, when she had recovered the first shock of admiration. “Rob, was it you that did that? are you sure it’s your ain doing?” She could not trust her own eyes.
“And poor enough too,” said Rob, but he liked the implied applause: who would not? Praise of what we have done well may satisfy our intellectual faculties, but praise of a failure, that is a thing which really goes to the heart.
“Poor! I would like to ken what you mean by poor?” Mrs. Glen pushed away the broth and took up the block in a rapture of surprise and delight. “It’s the very Kirkton itself!” she said; “there’s Robert Jamieson’s house, and there’s Hugh Macfarlane’s, and there’s the way you go to the post, and there’s the Kilnelly burying-ground, and the little road up to the kirk—no a thing missed out. And do you mean to tell me it’s a’ your own doing? Oh, laddie, laddie, the talents you’ve gotten frae Providence! and the little use you make o’ them,” added his mother, with a sudden recollection of the burden of her prophecy against her son, which could not be departed from even now.
Rob was so much encouraged that he ventured to laugh. “There is nothing I wish so much as to make more use of them,” he said; “I ought to study and have good teaching.”
“Teaching! what do you want with teaching? You were never one that was easy satisfied; what mair would you have?” she cried. She could not take her eyes from the drawing. She touched it lightly with her finger to make sure that it was flat, and did not owe its perspective to mechanical causes. “To think it’s naething but a cedar pencil and a wheen paints! I never saw the like! and you to do it, a laddie like you! It beats me! Ay, there’s Robert Jamieson’s house, and yon’s Hugh Macfarlane’s, and the wee gate into the kirk-yard as natural! and Widow Morrison’s small shop joining the kirk. I can ’most see the things in the window. I would like the Minister to see it,” said Mrs. Glen.
“Not that one, it is not good enough; there are others, mother.”
She cast upon him a half-contemptuous glance. He was “no judge,” even though it was he who had done it: how could he be a judge, when he had so little appreciation of this great work?
“It’s a great deal you ken,” she said; “I will take it mysel’ and let him see it. He would be awfu’ pleased. His ain kirk, and ye can just see the Manse trees, though it’s no in the picture. And a’ done in one forenoon! I suppose,” she added, suddenly, “the like of this brings in siller. It’s a business, like any other trade?”
“When they are better than that, yes—pictures sell; but you should not speak of it as a trade.”
“I wish it was half as honest and straightforward as many a trade. Better than that! that’s aye your way. But you have not suppit your broth. I would not say now,” said Mrs. Glen, in high good-humor “(sit down and finish your dinner), but Miss Margret would like a look at that.”