THE OPEN DOOR, AND THE PORTRAIT

Stories of the Seen and the Unseen

By Margaret O. Wilson Oliphant's

1881




I

THE OPEN DOOR.


I took the house of Brentwood on my return from India in 18--, for the
temporary accommodation of my family, until I could find a permanent
home for them. It had many advantages which made it peculiarly
appropriate. It was within reach of Edinburgh; and my boy Roland, whose
education had been considerably neglected, could go in and out to
school; which was thought to be better for him than either leaving home
altogether or staying there always with a tutor. The first of these
expedients would have seemed preferable to me; the second commended
itself to his mother. The doctor, like a judicious man, took the midway
between. "Put him on his pony, and let him rile into the High School
every morning; it will do him all the good in the world," Dr. Simson
said; "and when it is bad weather, there is the train." His mother
accepted this solution of the difficulty more easily than I could have
hoped; and our pale-faced boy, who had never known anything more