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

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“There it is; you can judge for yourself,” cried Rob, with sudden exasperation. He jumped up from the table so quickly that his mother had no time to point out his want of manners in getting up in the midst of his dinner. The words were stopped on her lips, when he suddenly placed the block on which he had been drawing before her. Mrs. Glen had not condescended to look at any of these performances before. It would have seemed a sort of acceptance of his excuse had she taken any notice of the “rubbitch” with which he “played himself,” and she had really felt the contempt she expressed. Drawing pictures! it was a kind of childish occupation, an amusement to be pursued on a wet day, when nothing else was possible, or as a solace in the tedium of illness. But when Rob put down before her, relieved against the white table-cloth, the Kirkton itself in little, a very reproduction of the familiar scene she had beheld every day for years, the words were stopped upon his mother’s lips.

“Eh!” she cried, in mere excess of emotion, able for nothing but a monosyllable. The very imperfection of it gave it weight in Mrs. Glen’s unpractised eyes. “Losh me!” she cried, when she had recovered the first shock of admiration. “Rob, was it you that did that? are you sure it’s your ain doing?” She could not trust her own eyes.