"Not very many," Uncle William proudly replied.
"No, indeed there's not, I tell you, John, son, the MacDermotts are someone in this town, as grand in their way and as proud as Lord Castlederry himself. That's something to live up to, isn't it! The good name of your family! But if you go tramping the world for adventures and romances, the way your Uncle Matthew would have you do, you'll lose it all, and there'll be strangers in the house that your family's lived in all these generations. And mebbe you'll come here, when you're an oul' man and we're all dead and buried, and no one in the place'll have any mind of you at all, and you'll be lonelier here nor anywhere else. Oh, it would be terrible to be treated like a stranger in your own town! And if you did start a bookshop and it failed on you, and you lost all your money, wouldn't it be worse disgrace than any not to be able to pay your debts in a place where everyone knows you ... to be made a bankrupt mebbe?"
"Ah, but, ma, the world would never move at all if everybody stopped in the one place!" John said.
"The world'll move well enough," she answered. "God moves it, not you."
John got up from the table and went, and sat on a low stool by the fire. "I don't know so much," he said. "I read in a book one time!..."
"Aye, ma, in a book!" John stoutly answered. "After all, you know the Bible's a book!" Mrs. MacDermott had not got a retort to that statement, and John, aware that he had scored a point, hurriedly proceeded, "I was reading one time that all the work in the world was started by men that wrote books. There never was any change or progress 'til someone started to think and write!..."
Mrs. MacDermott recovered her wits. "Were they happy and contented men?" she demanded.
"I don't know, ma," John replied. "The book didn't say that. I suppose not, or they wouldn't have wanted to make any alterations!"
"Let them that wants to make changes, make them," said Mrs. MacDermott. "There's no need for you to go about altering the world when you can stay at home here happy and content!"
Uncle Matthew rose from the table and came towards Mrs. MacDermott. "What does it matter whether you're happy and contented or not, so long as things are happening to you?" he exclaimed.