"Yes, I must; but I'll read the rest from the church. Open the
window, Mandy!" And he passed out of the door and quickly down
the stairs.
Chapter VI
WHEN John Douglas's uncle offered to educate his nephew for the
ministry, the boy was less enthusiastic than his mother. He did
not remonstrate, however, for it had been the custom of
generations for at least one son of each Douglas family to preach
the gospel of Calvinism, and his father's career as an architect
and landscape gardener had not left him much capital.
Douglas, senior, had been recognised as an artist by the few who
understood his talents, but there is small demand for the builder
of picturesque houses in the little business towns of the Middle
West, and at last he passed away, leaving his son only the burden
of his financial failure and an ardent desire to succeed at the
profession in which his father had fared so badly. The hopeless,
defeated look on the departed man's face had always haunted the
boy, who was artist enough to feel his father's genius
intuitively, and human enough to resent the injustice of his
fate.
Douglas's mother had suffered so much because of the impractical
efforts of her husband, that she discouraged the early tendencies
of the son toward drawing and mathematics and tried to direct his
thoughts toward creeds and Bible history.
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