“What Lauderdale makes up by working for years, and what we can’t make up by any amount of working, Sir Thomas does with a scrape of his pen,” said Colin. “Downstairs they need to take little thought about these matters, and up here a great deal of thought serves very little purpose. On the whole, it seems to me that it would be very good for our tempers and for our minds in general if we all had plenty of money,” said the young philosopher, still laughing. He was tolerably indifferent on the subject, and able to take it easily. While he spoke, his eye lighted on his mother’s face, who was not regarding the matter by any means so lightly. Mrs. Campbell on the contrary was suffering under one of the greatest minor trials of a woman. She thought her son’s life depended on this going to Italy, and to procure the means for it there was nothing on earth his mother would not have done. She would have undertaken joyfully the rudest and hardest labour that ever was undertaken by man. She would have put her hands, which indeed were not unaccustomed to work, to any kind of toil; but with this eager, longing in her heart she knew at the same time that it was quite impossible for her to do anything by which she could earn those sacred and precious coins on which her boy’s life depended. While Colin spoke, his mother was making painful calculations what she could save and spare, at least, if she could not earn. Colin stopped short when he looked at her; he could not laugh any longer. What was to him a matter of amusing speculation was to her life or death. “There canna but be inequalities in this world,” said the Mistress, her tender brows still puckered with their baffling calculations. “I’m no envious of ony grandeur, nor of taking my ease, nor of the pleasures of this life. We’re awfu’ happy at hame in our sma’ way when a’s weel with the bairns; but it’s for their sakes, to get them a’ that’s good for them! Money’s precious when it means health and life,” said Mrs. Campbell, with a sigh; “and it’s awfu’ hard upon a woman when she can do nothing for her ain, and them in need.” “I’ve known it hard upon mony a man,” said Lauderdale; “there’s little difference when it comes to that. But a hundred pounds,” he continued, with a delightful consciousness of power and magnificence, “is not a bad sum to begin upon; before that’s done, there will be time to think of more. It’s none of your business, callant, that I can see. If you’ll no come with me, you must even stay behind. I’ve set my heart on a holiday. A man has little good of his existence when he does nothing but work and eat, and eat and work again, as I’ve been doing. I would like to take the play a while, and feel that I’m alive.”