At the beginning of the meal there was little conversation, but when the family were alone, Mrs. Caird said, "I hope you are feeling better, Ian. What at all was the matter with you at the lunch hour?" "I was not sick. I was very wretched, and could not eat." "Donald, poor lad! I suppose?" "Just so. Donald has treated me in a very ungrateful and disobedient manner. I know not how I can bear it." "Forgive him." "I have forgiven so often." "That is the way. The best children are aye doing something wrong, forgive Donald as you go along. It is God's way with yourself, Ian." "His behavior has destroyed my happiness." "Perhaps, also, you have destroyed his happiness. Everyone has their own kind of happiness, but you want everyone to be happy in your way or not be happy at all. I call that even down selfishness. Ian, you have made a great blunder. I only hope it will not be followed by a great penalty." "Blunder! Yes, if it be a blunder to take a man out of temptation and put him under the best of influences." "You think college life the best of influences?" "It is better than wandering about the country as a musician, however clever he is, must do." "But Donald likes wandering. He wants to see the wide world over." "A roving life, Jessy, leads to wavering principles. How can a man be religious who has no settled church? Already, Donald disbelieves in the creed his father preaches, and a man without a creed is a loose-at-ends Christian. General scepticism will succeed it, and scepticism poisons all the wells of life and undermines the foundations of morality." "Donald is no sceptic. He is a God-loving, God-fearing lad. You'll be to excuse me now. I have a sore headache and I want to be alone." So she went to her room and Dr. Macrae was much annoyed at her air of injury and sorrow. "Your aunt is fretting about Donald," he said. "Donald has behaved very cruelly to me, Marion. I suppose you know how." "About college, Father?" "Yes. I begged him, for his own good, to go to St. Andrews, and he flatly refused, bid me farewell, and left his home." "Did you not ask him where he was going?" "No." "I am so sorry." "I knew you would be sorry for me. Never would Marion treat her father in a way so disrespectful and disobedient, eh, dear?" "While I live I never will say farewell to you, my dear Father." "You will always obey my wishes, I know." "When I can, yes, when I can I will always gladly obey them." "Do I not know what is best for you?" "Not always, you might be wrong sometimes, Father--everybody is wrong sometimes--but, even so, I would obey you if I could." "You mean that if you could not you would take your own way?" "Not exactly." "And say farewell to me and leave your home?" "I would never say farewell to you. I do not think I would leave my home in any such way." "What would you do?" "Love you and die daily at your side. When you saw me suffering you would give me my desire, because it would be my life."