His son’s proposal to be a “writer” he took almost as a personal insult.  He had formed his own opinion of the profession and the opinion of any other person who would say a word in favor of a lawyer he considered of no value.  Margaret had a hard task before her, that she succeeded at all was due to her womanly tact.  Ronald and his father simply clashed against each other and exchanged pointed truths which hurt worse than wounds.  At length, when the short Arcadean summer was almost over, Margaret won a hard and reluctant consent.

“The lad is fit for naething better, I suppose”—­and the old man turned away to shed the bitterest tears of his whole life.  They shocked Margaret; she was terrified at her success, and, falling humbly at his feet, she besought him to forget and forgive her importunities, and to take back a gift baptized with such ominous tears.

But Peter Sinclair, having been compelled to take such a step, was not the man to retrace it; he shook his head in a dour, hopeless way:  “He couldna say ‘yes’ an’ ‘no’ in a breath, an’ Ronald must e’en drink as he brewed.”

These struggles, so real and sorrowful to his father and sister, Ronald had no sympathy with—­not that he was heartless, but that he had taught himself to believe they were the result of ignorance of the world and old-fashioned prejudices.  He certainly intended to become a great man—­perhaps a judge—­and, when he was one of “the Lords,” he had no doubt his father would respect his disobedience.  He knew his father as little as he knew himself.  Peter Sinclair was only Peter Sinclair’s opinions incorporate; and he could no more have changed them than he could have changed the color of his eyes or the shape of his nose; and the difference between a common lawyer and a “lord,” in his eyes, would only have been the difference between a little oppressor and a great one.

For the first time in all her life Margaret suspected a flaw in this perfect crystal of a brother; his gay debonnaire manner hurt her.  Even if her father’s objections were ignorant prejudices, they were positive convictions to him, and she did not like to see them smiled at, entertained by the cast of the eye, and the put-by of the turning hand.  But loving women are the greatest of philistines:  knock their idol down daily, rob it of every beauty, cut off its hands and head, and they will still “set it up in its place,” and fall down and worship it.

Undoubtedly Margaret was one of the blindest of these characters, but the world may pause before it scorns them too bitterly.  It is faith of this sublime integrity which, brought down to personal experience, believes, endures, hopes, sacrifices and loves on to the end, winning finally what never would have been given to a more prudent and reasonable devotion.  So, if Margaret had her doubts, she put them arbitrarily down, and sent her brother away with manifold tokens of her love—­among them, with a check on the Kirkwall Bank for sixty pounds, the whole of her personal savings.