“What are you doing?” she cried; “do you call that doing onything--drawing a crookit line with a pencil and filling it up with paint? Paint! ye might paint the auld cart if that’s the trade you mean to follow. It would aye be worth a shilling or twa, which is mair than ever thae scarts and splashes will be.” Or when Rob escaped into the seclusion of a book: “Read, oh ay, ye can read fast enough when it’s for naething but diversion and to pass the time; but ye’ll ne’er gather bawbees with your reading, nor be a credit to them that belong to you.” This was the sting of the whole. He was no credit to those who belonged to him, rather he was an implied shame; for who would believe, Mrs. Glen asked, that this sudden return was by his own will? “Na, na,” she said, “they’ll think it is for ill-doing, and that he’s turned away out of the college. It’s what I would do mysel’. And to think of all I’ve done, and all I’ve put up with, and a’ to come to naething! Eh, man! I would soon, soon have put an end to your douts. I would have made ye sure of ae thing, if it hadna been your uncle Robert and his ministers, ye should hae had nae douts about that: that no idle lad should sit at my fireside and devour the best o’ everything. If ye had the heart of a mouse ye couldna do it. Me, I would starve first; me, I would sweep the streets. I would go down a coal-pit, or work in a gawley chain afore I would sorn on my ain mother, a widow-woman, and eat her out o’ house and hame!” Poor Rob! he was not very sensitive, and he had been used to his mother’s ways and moods, or these reproaches would have been hard upon him. No doubt, had he been the innocent sufferer for conscience’ sake which he half believed himself to be, life would have been unendurable in these circumstances; but as it was, he only shrugged his shoulders, or jibed in return and paid her back in her own coin. They were both made of the same rough material, and were able to give and take, playing with the blows which would have killed others. Rob was not driven out of the house, out upon the world in despair, as a more sensitive person might have been. He stayed doggedly, not minding what was said, till he should succeed in extracting the money which would be necessary for his start; and from this steady purpose a few warm words were not likely to dissuade him. He, on his side, felt that he was too much of a man for that. But it is not pleasant to have your faults dinned into your ears, however much you may scorn the infliction, and Rob had gone out on the day he met Margaret very much cast down and discouraged. He had almost made up his mind to confront fate rather than his mother. Almost--but he was not a rash young man, notwithstanding all that had happened to him, and the discomfort of issuing forth upon the world penniless was greater than putting up (he said to himself) with an old wife’s flyting; but still the flyting was not pleasant to bear.