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

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“And poor enough too,” said Rob, but he liked the implied applause: who would not? Praise of what we have done well may satisfy our intellectual faculties, but praise of a failure, that is a thing which really goes to the heart.

“Poor! I would like to ken what you mean by poor?” Mrs. Glen pushed away the broth and took up the block in a rapture of surprise and delight. “It’s the very Kirkton itself!” she said; “there’s Robert Jamieson’s house, and there’s Hugh Macfarlane’s, and there’s the way you go to the post, and there’s the Kilnelly burying-ground, and the little road up to the kirk—no a thing missed out. And do you mean to tell me it’s a’ your own doing? Oh, laddie, laddie, the talents you’ve gotten frae Providence! and the little use you make o’ them,” added his mother, with a sudden recollection of the burden of her prophecy against her son, which could not be departed from even now.

Rob was so much encouraged that he ventured to laugh. “There is nothing I wish so much as to make more use of them,” he said; “I ought to study and have good teaching.”