Gathered In by Catherine Helen Spence — Read

Kenneth accepted the apology so humbly offered; but the words sank into his mind notwithstanding. Mr. McDiarmid came from the North to see his boy before he left Edinburgh for his departure to unknown lands; he comforted him for his failure about the degree, and took far more cheerful views as to Mr. George Oswald of Tingalpa, than his College friend or than Kenneth himself could take from the letters. He was not only Isabel's brother but her favourite brother. His very sensitiveness about Kenneth's birth, and the ignoring of her in his letters which had hurt the son so much, made Norman McDiarmid see more love in his doings than any one else. As the days hurried on, and the session closed, and there was only to be the short farewell visit to his grandparents and Nelly, he felt daily more reluctance to go to discover what was expected from him in Victoria. Henry Stalker accompanied his friend in this visit. He had before made himself a favourite in the household; his regard for Kenneth was genuine, he was so much plainer in appearance that they were never afraid of his eclipsing their own particular hero, and all Kenneth's praises of his friend's greater abilities and higher standing at the University, backed by his marvellous flow of talk and legend and anecdote and quotation, could not shake Mrs. Oswald's idea that if only Kenneth had taken to the Kirk, he could have outshone the elder student. Whereas he had gone in for being a gentleman by his uncle's orders, and young Stalker was not fit to hold the candle to him in that respect.

Mrs. Oswald interested Stalker much more than her husband did, and he loved to draw her out, and to elicit by question and rejoinder that curious mixture of Calvinistic theology and wordly wisdom, which is so essentially a national characteristic of the bygone generation.