counted dangerous for him; but seeing her poorly dressed, and looking
untidy, which at the moment she could not help, the mother took her for an
ordinary maid-of-all-work, and never for a moment doubted that her son must
see her just as she did. He was her only son; her heart was full of
ambition for him; and she brooded on the honour he was destined to bring
her and his father. The latter, however, caring less for his good looks,
had neither the same satisfaction in him nor an equal expectation from him.
Neither of his parents, indeed, had as yet reaped much pleasure from his
existence, however much one of them might hope for in the time to come.
There were two things indeed against such satisfaction or pleasure--that
James had never been open-hearted toward them, never communicative as to
his feelings, or even his doings; and--which was worse--that he had long
made them feel in him a certain unexpressed claim to superiority. Nor would
it have lessened their uneasiness at this to have noted that the existence
of such an implicit claim was more or less evident in relation to every one
with whom he came in contact, manifested mainly by a stiff,
incommunicative reluctance, taking the form now of a pretended absorption
in his books, now of contempt for any sort of manual labour, even to the
saddling of the pony he was about to ride; and now and always by an
affectation of proper English, which, while successful as to grammar and
accentuation, did not escape the ludicrous in a certain stiltedness of tone
and inflection, from which intrusion of the would-be gentleman, his father,
a simple, old-fashioned man, shrank with more of dislike than he was
willing to be conscious of.

Quite content that, having a better education than himself, his son should
both be and show himself superior, he could not help feeling that these his
ways of asserting himself were signs of mere foolishness, and especially as
conjoined with his wish to be a minister--in regard to which Peter but
feebly sympathized with the general ambition of Scots parents. Full of