"My dear boy, I want you to try and forget what passed the other night,
when, stung almost beyond endurance, I said words to you that no
gentleman ought to have spoken toward one who was his guest, and more
than guest, the companion and friend of his son. There, I apologise to
you humbly. Will you forgive me?"
"Mr Mackhai!" cried Max, in a choking voice, as he seized the hand
extended to him.
"Hah! that is frank and natural, my lad. Thank you. Now, shall we
forget the past?"
Max nodded, but he could not trust himself to speak, while Kenneth ran
round to the other side of the bed.
"And he is not to think of going, father?" he cried.
"I don't say that, Ken," replied his father. "Under all the
circumstances, I can readily believe that Max would prefer to return to
town; but I expressly forbid his hurrying away. Oblige me, Max, by
staying with Kenneth till next Thursday, when I shall return. It will
be dull for him alone."
"Are you going away, father?"
"Yes; I start for Edinburgh at once, and as I shall not see you again,
Max, I will say good-bye. You will be gone before I reach Dunroe in the
evening."
He shook hands once more, and left the room, Max thoroughly grasping the
gentlemanly feeling which had prompted him to behave with so much
delicacy.
"There, Max, you will stay now?" cried Kenneth.
"Yes, I will stay now," he replied.
"Then that's all right. We'll have some fishing and shooting--for the
last few times," he said to himself, as he turned away to see his father
before he left the place.
Max rose and dressed as soon as he was alone, but he was not long in
finding that he was not in a fit condition to take a journey; and during
the rest of his stay at Dunroe there were no more pleasure-trips, for
the zest for them was in the case of both lads gone.
And yet those last days were not unpleasant, for there was a peculiar
anxiety on the part of both to make up for the past. Kenneth was eager
in the extreme to render Max's last days there such as should give him
agreeable memories of their intercourse. While, on the other side, Max
felt deeply what Kenneth's position must be, and he too tried hard to
soften the pain of his lot.
Max had had a business-like letter from his father, telling him that he
had been compelled, by The Mackhai's failure to keep his engagements, to
foreclose certain mortgages and take possession of the estates. Under
these circumstances, he wished his son to remain there and supervise the
proceedings of the bailiffs, writing to him in town every night as to
how matters stood.
It was a cool, matter-of-fact, legal letter, written by a clerk,
probably from dictation, and signed by the old lawyer. But at the
bottom there was a postscript in his own crabbed hand, as follows:--
"You will be able to watch over all with more pleasure, when I tell you
that Dunroe is yours. I mean it to be your estate, and you can see now
why I sent you down there to learn how to be a Scottish gentleman."
Max flushed as he read this, and he exclaimed aloud--"A Scottish
gentleman could not bear to be placed in such a position!" and he sat
down and wrote at once to say that he had been seriously unwell, and
must return to town on a certain day.
"Squeamish young donkey!" said the hard-griping old man of the world,
when he received his son's letter. "Bad as his weak, sensitive mother.
Know better some day. If I had been so particular, Dunroe would not be
mine to leave."