Savile Row or the Admiralty to his home, not because there was
no time for other method of progression, but because he must be
fit, fit, fit. No more 'Old Mooney' for him; he kept an eye for
ever on that gentleman, and became doggedly the most practical of
men. And practical in the cheeriest of ways. In 1894 a disastrous
change came over the fortunes of the family, the father's money
being lost and then Scott was practical indeed. A letter he wrote I
at this time to his mother, tenderly taking everything and everybody
on his shoulders, must be one of the best letters ever written by
a son, and I hope it may be some day published. His mother was the
great person of his early life, more to him even than his brother
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or his father, whom circumstances had deprived of the glory of
following the sailor's profession and whose ambitions were all
bound up in this son, determined that Con should do the big things
he had not done himself. For the rest of his life Con became the
head of the family, devoting his time and his means to them, not
in an it-must-be-done manner, but with joy and even gaiety. He
never seems to have shown a gayer front than when the troubles
fell, and at a farm to which they retired for a time he became
famous as a provider of concerts. Not only must there be no 'Old
Mooney' in him, but it must be driven out of everyone. His concerts,
in which he took a leading part, became celebrated in the district,
deputations called to beg for another, and once in these words, 'Wull
'ee gie we a concert over our way when the comic young gentleman
be here along?'

Some servants having had to go at this period, Scott conceived
the idea that he must even help domestically in the house, and
took his own bedroom under his charge with results that were