Читать книгу The Primrose Path: A Chapter in the Annals of the Kingdom of Fife онлайн
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Again Rob laughed; he was indemnified for all his sufferings. “I will not keep you in doubt,” he said, with a certain condescension. “It is little Margaret Leslie; you cannot have forgotten her, mother. If she is not a lady I don’t know who is, and,” he added, sinking his voice with genuine feeling, and a tender rush of childish recollection, “my little queen.”
“Little Margaret Leslie!” said his mother, looking at him stupefied, “you’re no meaning Miss Margret at Earl’s-hall?” she cried, with a half shriek of astonishment, and gazed at him open-mouthed, like one in a dream.
CHAPTER VI.
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Mrs. Glen was much more gentle with her son after this triumph of his. Margaret Leslie was but a girl, and her approbation did not mean very much; but it was astonishing how the farmer-woman calmed down, and what a different aspect things began to take to her, after she heard of this meeting. She said nothing more that night; but stared at her son, and let him go, with a half-reluctant relinquishment of her prey, for the moment. And many were the thoughts which crowded through her mind during the night. She had a respect for talent, like all her nation; but she did not admire the talent which was unpractical, and which did not serve a purpose. A young man who was clever enough to pass all his examinations with credit, to preach a good sermon, to get a living, that was what she could understand, and she had been proud by anticipation in her son’s ability to do all this; but when it turned out that he did not mean to employ his talent so, and when his cleverness dwindled down into something impalpable, something that could neither be bought and sold, nor weighed and measured, something which only made a difference between him and other men, without being of any use to him or placing him in the way of any advantage—instead of respecting it, Mrs. Glen scorned the miserable distinction. “Clever! ay, and much good it did him. Tawlent! he would be better without it.”