protective pity, her great passion was for her brother--her handsome,
vivacious, audacious and mercurial brother, Tony. With him she counted
it only joy to share her all too meagre wages whenever he found himself
in financial straits. And a not infrequent situation this was with Tony,
who, while he seemed to have inherited from his mother the vivacity,
quick wit and general empty-headedness, from his father got nothing of
the thrift and patient endurance of grinding toil characteristic of the
French-Canadian habitant. But he did get from his father a capacity for
the knowing and handling of machinery, which amounted almost to genius.
Of the father's steadiness under the grind of daily work which had made
him the head mechanic in the Mill, Tony possessed not a tittle. What
he could get easily he got, and getting this fancied himself richly
endowed, knowing not how slight and superficial is the equipment for
life's stern fight that comes without sweat of brain and body. His
cleverness deceived first himself and then his family, who united in
believing him to be destined for high place and great things. Only
two of those who had to do with him in his boyhood weighed him in the
balance of truth. One was his Public School master, who labored with
incessant and painful care to awaken in him some glimmer of the need of
preparation for that bitter fight to which every man is appointed. The
other was Grant Maitland, whose knowledge of men and of life, gained at
cost of desperate conflict, made the youth's soul an open book to him.
Recognising the boy's aptitude, he had in holiday seasons set Tony
behind the machines in his planing mill, determined for his father's
sake to make of him a mechanical engineer. To Tony each new machine was
a toy to be played with; in a week or two he had mastered it and
grown weary of it. Thenceforth he slacked at his work and became a
demoralizing influence in his department, a source of anxiety to his
steady-going father, a plague to his employer, till the holiday time was
done.