Mrs. Boyd's face as she smiled back at Donald was not exactly "jolly." Still, she did smile; and then there came out the strong likeness often seen between mother and son, even when, as in this case, the features were very dissimilar. Mrs. Boyd was a pretty, delicate little English woman: and Donald took after his father, a big, brawny Scotsman, certainly not pretty, and not always sweet. Poor man! he had of late years had only too much to make him sour.
Though she tried to smile and succeeded, the tears were in Mrs. Boyd's eyes, and her mouth was quivering. But she set it tightly together, and then she looked more than ever like her son, or rather, her son looked like her.
He was too eager in his delight to notice her much. "It is jolly, isn't it, mother? I never thought I'd get to the top of the school at all, for I'm not near so clever as some of the fellows. But now I've got my place; and I like it, and I mean to keep it; you'll be pleased at that, mother?"
"I should have been if—if—" Mrs. Boyd tried to get the words out and failed, closed her eyes as tight as her mouth for a minute, then opened them and looked her boy in the face gravely and sadly.
"It goes to my heart to tell you—I have been waiting to say it all morning, but, Donald, my dear, you will never go back to school at all."
"Not go back; when I'm captain! why, you and father both said that if I got to be that, I should not stop till I was seventeen—and now I'm only fifteen and a half. O, mother, you don't mean it! Father couldn't break his word! I may go back!"
Mrs. Boyd shook her head sadly, and then explained as briefly and calmly as she could the heavy blow which had fallen upon the father, and, indeed, upon the whole family. Mr. Boyd had long been troubled with his eyes, about as serious a trouble as could have befallen a man in his profession—an accountant—as they call it in Scotland. Lately he had made some serious blunders in his arithmetic, and his eyesight was so weak that his wife persuaded him to consult a first-rate Edinburgh oculist, whose opinion, given only yesterday, after many days of anxious suspense, was that in a few months he would become incurably blind.
"Blind, poor father blind!" Donald put his hand before his own eyes. He was too big a boy to cry, or at any rate, to be seen crying, but it was with a choking voice that he spoke next: "I'll be his eyes; I'm old enough."
"Yes; in many ways you are, my son," said Mrs. Boyd, who had had a day and a night to face her sorrow, and knew she must do so calmly. "But you are not old enough to manage the business; your father will require to take a partner immediately, which will reduce our income one-half. Therefore we cannot possibly afford to send you to school again. The little ones must go, they are not nearly educated yet, but you are. You will have to face the world and earn your own living, as soon as ever you can. My poor boy!"
"Don't call me poor, mother. I've got you and father and the rest. And, as you say, I've had a good education so far. And I'm fifteen and a half, no, fifteen and three-quarters—almost a man. I'm not afraid."