acceptance.

He did not drop, as his manner indicated, all his resentment for some
weeks--and then Mac Tavish picked up the resentment and loyally carried it
for the master, in the way of outward malevolence and inner seething. The
regular joke in Marion was built around the statement that if anybody
wanted to get next to a hot Scotch in these prohibition times, step into
the St. Ronan's mill office any morning about nine-thirty.

Up to date Mac Tavish had not thrown any paper-weights through the wicket,
though he had been collecting ammunition in that line against the day when
nothing else could express his emotions. It was in his mind that the
occasion would come when Stewart Morrison finally reached the limit of
endurance and, with the Highland chieftain's battle-cry of the old clan,
started in to clear the office, throwing his resignation after the gang o'
them! Mac Tavish would throw the paper-weights. He wondered every day if
that would be the day, and the encouraging expectation helped him to
endure.

Among those present was a young fellow with his chaps tied up; there was a
sniveling old woman who patted the young man's shoulder and evoked
protesting growls. There were shifty-eyed men who wanted to make a
touch--Mac Tavish knew the breed. There was a fat, wheezy, pig-farm keeper
who had a swill contract with the city and came in every other day with a
grunt of fresh complaint. There were the usual new faces, but Mac Tavish
understood perfectly well that they were there to bother a mayor, not to
help the woolen-goods business. There was old Hon. Calvin Dow, a pensioner
of David Morrison, now passed on to the considerately befriending Stewart,
and Mac Tavish was deeply disgusted with a man who was so impractical in
his business affairs that, though he had been financially busted for ten