Читать книгу The Primrose Path: A Chapter in the Annals of the Kingdom of Fife онлайн

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Mrs. Glen was not at all respectful of honest doubt, and she had a thorough contempt for anything and everything that kept a man from making his way in the world. She was not indeed a person of refinement at all. She had lived a hard life, struggling to bring up her children and to “push them forrit,” as she said. The expression was homely, and the end to be obtained perhaps not very elevated. To “push forrit” your son to be Lord Chancellor, or even a general officer, or a bishop, is a fine thing, which strikes the spectator; but when all you can do is to push him “forrit” to a shop in Dundee, is the struggle less noble? It is less imposing, at all events. And the struggling mother who had done her best to procure such rise in life and in comfort as was within her reach for her children was not a person of noble mind or generous understanding. When Rob came home, upon whom her highest hopes had been set, not prosperous like the others, but a failure and disappointment, doing nothing, earning nothing, and with no prospect before him of either occupation or gain, her mortification made her bitter. Fury and disappointment filled her heart. She kept silent for the first day, only going about her household affairs with angry energy, scolding her servants, and as they said, “dinging everything about.” “So lang as she disna ding me!” said Jean the dairy-maid; but it was not to be expected that any long time should pass before she began to “ding” some one, and ere long the culprit himself began to feel the force of her trouble.