“My dear,” she said, “when this calamity is over-past, and you have got settled a little, there will be plenty of things that you could do.”
“That’s very doubtful,” he said; “and you have not much faith in it yourself. I’ve been used to do nothing. I don’t know what work is like. Do you think I’m fit for it? I had to work on board ship, and how I hated it words could never tell. I was too much of a duffer, they said, to do seaman’s work. They made me help the cook—fancy, your son helping the cook!”
“It is quite honest work,” she said, with a little quiver in her voice—“quite honest work.”
He laughed a little. “That’s like you,” he said; “and now you will want me to do more honest work. I will need to, I suppose.” He paused here, and gave her a keen look, which, fortunately, she did not understand. “But the thing is, I’m good for nothing. I cannot dig, and to beg I am ashamed. I’ve done many things, but I’ve not worked much all my life. I will be left on your hands—and what will you do with me?” He was not so indifferent, after all, as when he began. He was almost in earnest, keeping his eye upon her, to read her face as well as her words. But somehow she, who was so anxious to divine him, to discover what he wished her to say—she had no notion, notwithstanding all her anxiety, what it was he desired to know.
“My bonnie man!” she said, “it’s a hard question to answer. What could I wish to do with you but what would be best for yourself? I have made no plan for you, Robbie. Whatever you can think of that you would like—or whatever we can think of, putting our two heads together—but just, my dear, what would suit you best——”
“But suppose there is nothing I would like—and suppose I was just on your hands a helpless lump——”
“I will suppose no such thing,” she said, with the tears coming to her eyes; “why should I suppose that of my son? No, no! no, no! You are young yet, and in all your strength, the Lord be praised! You might have come back to me with the life crushed out of you, like Willie Miller; or worn with that weary India, and the heat and the work, like Mrs Allender’s son in the Glen. But you, Robbie——”
“What would you have done with me,” he repeated, insisting, though with a half smile on his face, “if it had been as bad as that—if I had come to you like them?”
“Why should we think of that that is not, nor is like to be? Oh! my dear, I would have done the best I could with a sore heart. I would just have done my best, and pinched a little and scraped a little, and put forth my little skill to make you comfortable on what there was.”
“You have every air of being very comfortable yourself,” he said, looking round the room. “I thought so when I came first. You are like the man in the proverb—the parable, I mean—whose very servants had enough and to spare, while his son perished with hunger.”