The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Open Door, and the Portrait.
by Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

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Title: The Open Door, and the Portrait.
Stories of the Seen and the Unseen.

Author: Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

Release Date: November 11, 2003 [EBook #10052]

Language: English

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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
invigorating than Simla, began to encounter the brisk breezes of the
North in the subdued severity of the month of May. Before the time of
the vacation in July we had the satisfaction of seeing him begin to
acquire something of the brown and ruddy complexion of his
schoolfellows. The English system did not commend itself to Scotland in
these days. There was no little Eton at Fettes; nor do I think, if there
had been, that a genteel exotic of that class would have tempted either
my wife or me. The lad