CHAPTER IV.

A Family Consultation.

Mr. and Mrs. Campbell arrived first in their gig, which was seated for four persons, and which, indeed, Mr. Campbell called a phaeton. Their horse was a good steady, sober-minded brown horse, quite free from any imaginativeness or eccentricity, plump and sleek, and well-groomed; and the whole turnout had an appearance of comfort and well-being. They brought with them a young man whom Edgar had not yet seen, a Dr. Charles Murray, from the East-country, the son of Mrs. Murray’s eldest son, who had arrived that morning by the steamboat at Loch Arroch Head. From Greenock by the same conveyance—but not in Mr. Campbell’s gig—came James Murray, another of the old lady’s sons, who was “a provision merchant” in that town, dealing largely in hams and cheeses, and full of that reverential respect for money which is common with his kind. Lastly there arrived from Kildarton on the other side of Loch Long, a lady who had taken the opportunity, as she explained to Edgar, of indulging her young people with a picnic, which they were to hold in a little wooded dell, round the corner of the stubble field, facing Loch Long, while she came on to join the family party, and decide upon her mother’s destiny. This was Mrs. MacKell, Mrs. Murray’s youngest daughter, a good-looking, high-complexioned woman of forty-five, the wife of a Glasgow “merchant” (the phrase is wide, and allows of many gradations), who had been living in sea-side quarters, or, as her husband insisted on expressing it, “at the saut water,” in the pleasant sea-bathing village of Kildarton, opposite the mouth of Loch Arroch. The boat which deposited her at the little landing-place belonging to the Castle Farm, was a heavy boat of the district, filled with a bright-coloured and animated party, and provided with the baskets and hampers necessary for their party of pleasure. Mrs. MacKell stood on the bank, waving her hand to them as they hoisted the sail and floated back again round the yellow edge of the stubble field.

“Mind you keep your warm haps on, girls, and don’t wet your feet,” she called to them; “and oh, Andrew, my man, for mercy’s sake take care of that awful sail!”

This adjuration was replied to by a burst of laughter in many voices, and a “Never fear, mother,” from Andrew; but Mrs. MacKell shook her good-looking head as she accepted Edgar’s hand to ascend the slope. All the kindred regarded Edgar with a mixture of curiosity and awe, and it was, perhaps, a slight nervous shyness in respect to this stranger, so aristocratical-looking, as Mrs. MacKell expressed herself, which gave a little additional loudness and apparent gaiety to that excellent woman’s first address.

“I’m always afraid of those sails. They’re very uncanny sort of things when a person does not quite understand the nature of our lochs. I suppose, Mr. Edgar, you’re in that case?” said Mrs. MacKell, looking at him with an ingratiating smile.

He was her nephew, there could be no doubt of it, and she had a right to talk to him familiarly; but at the same time he was a fine gentleman and a stranger, and made an impression upon her mind which was but inadequately counter-balanced by any self-assurances that he was “just an orphan lad—no better—not to say a great deal worse off than our own bairns.” Such representations did not affect the question as they ought to have done, when this strange personage, “no better, not to say a great deal worse” than themselves, stood with his smile which made them slightly uncomfortable, before them. It was the most open and genial smile, and in former times Edgar had been supposed a great deal too much disposed to place himself on a level with all sorts of people; but now-a-days his look embarrassed his humble relations. There was a certain amusement in it, which bore no reference to them, which was entirely at himself, and the quaintly novel position in which he found himself, but which nevertheless affected them, nobody could have told why. He was not laughing at them, respectablest of people. They could not take offence, neither could they divine what he was laughing at; but the curious, whimsical, and often rueful amusement which mingled with many much less agreeable feelings, somehow made itself felt and produced an effect upon which he had never calculated. It was something they did not understand, and this consciousness partially irritated, partially awed these good people, who felt that the new man in their midst was a being beyond their comprehension. They respected his history and his previous position, though with a little of that characteristic contempt which mingles so strangely in Scotland with many old prejudices in favour of rank and family; they respected more honestly and entirely his little property, the scraps of his former high estate which made him still independent; but above all they now respected, though with some irritation, what seemed to them the unfathomableness of his character, the lurking smile in his eyes. It confirmed the superiority which imagination already acknowledged.

“I have not had much experience of the lochs,” said Edgar, following with his eyes the clumsy but gay boat, with its cargo of laughter, and frankly gay, if somewhat loud, merry-making.

Mrs. MacKell saw his look and was gratified.

“You’ll not know which are your cousins among so many,” she said; “and, indeed, the girls have been plaguing me to write over and ask you to come. They were all away back in Glasgow when my mother took ill, and just came down last week on my account. It’s late for sea-bathing quarters in Scotland; and, indeed, when they took it into their heads about this pic-nic, I just raged at them. A pic-nic in October, and on the loch! But when children set their hearts on a thing the mother’s aye made to give way; and they had to be kept quiet, you see, while my mother was ill, not knowing how it might end.”

“That is true,” said Edgar; “otherwise, so far as my poor grandmother is concerned, this cannot be called a very joyful occasion.”

“I don’t see that for my part,” cried Mrs. MacKell, feeling herself attacked, and responding with instant readiness. “Dear me! if I were in my mother’s position, to see all my children about me, all that remain, would aye be a joyful occasion, whatever was the cause; and what better could she do at her age than go up the loch to my sister Jean’s comfortable house, where she would be much made of, and have all her old friends about her? My mother has been a good mother. I have not a word to say against that; but she’s always been a proud woman, awfully proud, holding her head as high as the Duchess, and making everybody stand about. I’ll not say but what it has been very good for us, for we’ve never fallen among the common sort. But still, you know, unless where there’s siller that sort of thing cannot be kept up. Of course, I would like it better,” added Mrs. MacKell, “to have my mother near, where I could send the bairns—excuse me for using the words of the place.”

“Oh, I like the words,” said Edgar, with a laugh, which he could not quite restrain—better than the sentiments, he would have said.

“Where I could send any of my young folk that happened to be looking white, at any moment,” she went on; “far different from what I could do with Jean, who has the assurance to tell me she always invites her friends when she wants them, though her son has his dinner with us every Sunday of his life during the Session! Therefore it’s clear what my interest is. But you see, Mr. Edgar,” she continued, softening, “you have the ways of a rich man. You never think of the difficulties. Oh! Charles, is that you? I’m glad to see you looking so well; and how are things going in the East country? and how is your sister Marg’ret, and little Bell? If my young folk had known you were here, they would have wanted you away with them in the boat. But I must go ben and see my mother before all the folk come in. I suppose you are going to look over the farm, and the beasts, with the rest.”

The young doctor—upon whom as a man of his own age, and one more like the people he had been accustomed to than those he now found around him, Edgar had looked, with more interest than any of his other relations had called from him—came up to him now with a face overcast with care.

“May I speak to you about this painful subject,” he said, “before the others come in?”

“Why a painful subject?” asked Edgar, with a smile, which was half tremulous with feeling, and half indignant, too proud for sympathy.

“It may not be so to you,” said the young man. “She brought us up, every one of my family; but what can I do? I have a brother in Australia, too far off to help, and another a clerk in London. As for me, I have the charge of my eldest sister, who is a widow with a child. You don’t know what a hard fight it is for a young medical man struggling to make his way.”

“No, not yet,” said Edgar, with a smile.

“Not yet? How can you know? If I were to take my grandmother home with me, which I would do gladly, she would be far from everything that she knows and cares for—in a new place, among strangers. Her whole life would be broken up. And I could not take Jeanie,” the young man added, with a thrill of still greater pain in his voice. “There would be other dangers. What can we do? I cannot bear to think that she must leave this place. But I have so little power to help, and consequently so little voice in the matter.”

“I have not very much,” said Edgar; “but yet enough, I think, to decide this question. And so long as I have a shilling, she shall not be driven away from her home. On that I have made up my mind.”

His new cousin looked at him with admiration—then with a sigh:

“What a thing money is,” he said; “ever so little of it. You can take a high hand with them, having something; but I, to whom Robert Campbell and Mr. MacKell have both lent money to set me going—”

Edgar held out his hand to his companion.

“When this is settled I shall be in the same position,” he said; “worse, for you have a profession, and I have none. You must teach me how I can best work for daily bread.”

“You are joking,” said the young doctor, with a smile.

Like the others, he could not believe that Edgar, once so rich, could ever be entirely poor; and that he should denude himself altogether of his living for the sake of the old mother, whom they were all quite ready to help—in reason, was an idea impossible to be comprehended, and which nobody believed for a moment. He said nothing in reply, and the two stood together before the door waiting for the other men of the party, who were looking over “the beasts” and farm implements, and calculating how much they would bring.

James Murray, the provision merchant, was the typical Scotchman of fiction and drama—a dry, yellow man, with keen grey eyes, surrounded by many puckers, scrubby sandy hair, and a constant regard for his own interest. The result had been but indifferent, for he was the poorest of the family, always in difficulties, and making the sparest of livings by means of tremendous combinations of skill and thought sufficient to have made the most fabulous fortune—only fortune had never come his way. He had been poking the cows in the ribs, and inspecting the joints of every plough and harrow as if his life depended upon them. As he came forward to join the others, he put down in the note-book which he held in his hand, the different sums which he supposed they would bring. Altogether, it was a piece of business which pleased him. If he had ever had any sentimental feeling towards his old home, that was over many a long year ago; and that his mother, when she could no longer manage the farm, should give it up, and be happy and thankful to find a corner at her daughter’s fireside, was to him the most natural thing in life. The only thing that disturbed him, was the impossibility of making her seek a composition with her creditors, and thus saving something “for an emergency.”

“James has aye an eye to what may come after,” Mr. Campbell said, with his peculiar humour, and a laugh which made Edgar long to pitch him into the loch; “he’s thinking of the succession. Not that I’m opposed to compounding with the creditors in such a case. She’s well-known for an honest woman that’s paid her way, and held up her head with the best, and we all respect her, and many of us would have no objection to make a bit small sacrifice. I’m one myself, and I can speak. But your mother is a woman that has always had a great deal of her own way.”

“More than was good for her,” said James Murray, shaking his head. “She’s as obstinate as an auld mule when she takes a notion. She’s been mistress and mair these forty year, and like a women, she’ll hear no reason. Twelve or fifteen shillings in the pound is a very fine composition, and touches no man’s credit, besides leaving an old wife something in her pocket to win respect.”

“And to leave behind her,” said Campbell, laughing and slapping his brother-in-law on the back.

This was at the door of the farm-house, where they lingered a moment before going in. The loud laugh of the one and testy exclamation of the other, sounded in through the open windows of the parlour, where the mistress of the house sat with her daughters; probably the entire conversation had reached them in the same way. But of that no one took any thought. This meeting and family consultation was rather “a ploy” than otherwise to all the party. They liked the outing, the inspection, the sense of superiority involved. The sons and the daughters were intent upon making their mother hear reason and putting all nonsense out of her head. She had been foolish in these last years of her life. She had brought up Tom’s bairns, for instance, in a ridiculous way. It was all very well for Robert Campbell’s son, who was able to afford it, to be sent to College, but what right had Charlie Murray to be made a gentleman of at the expense of all the rest? To be sure his uncles and aunts were somewhat proud of him now that the process was completed, and liked to speak of “my nephew the doctor;” but still it was a thing that a grandmother, all whose descendants had an equal right to her favours, had no title to do.

“My bairns are just as near in blood, and have just as good a right to a share of what’s going; and when you think how many there are of them, and the fight we have had to give them all they require,” Mrs. MacKell said to Mrs. Campbell.

“Many or few,” said Mrs. Campbell to Mrs. MacKell, “we have all a right to our share. I’ve yet to learn that being one of ten bairns gives more claim than being an only child. Johnnie ought to be as much to his grandmother as any grand-bairn she has—as much as Charlie Murray that has cost her hundreds. But she never spent a pound note on my Johnnie all his life.”

“There have been plenty pound-notes spent on him,” said the younger sister, “but we need not quarrel, for neither yours nor mine will get anything from their grandmother now. But I hope the men will stand fast, and not yield to any fancies. My mother’s always been a good mother to us, but very injudicious with these children. There’s Jeanie, now, never taught to do a hand’s turn, but encouraged in all her fancies.”

“I would like to buy in the china,” said Mrs. Campbell. “Auld china is very much thought of now-a-days. I hear the Duchess drinks her tea out of nothing else, and the dafter-like the better. You’ll be surprised when you see how many odds and ends there are about the house, that would make a very good show if they were rightly set out.”

“My mother has some good things too, if all the corners were cleared, that are of no use to her, but that would come in very well for the girls,” said Mrs. MacKell; and with these kind and reverential thoughts they met their mother, who perhaps also—who knows?—had in her day been covetous of things that would come in for the girls. This was the easy and cheerful view which the family took of the circumstances altogether. Not one of them intended to be unkind. They were all quite determined that she should “want for nothing;” but still it was, on the whole, rather “a ploy” and pleasant expedition, this family assembly, which had been convened for the purpose of dethroning its head.

CHAPTER V.

The Family Martyr.

I need not say that the feelings with which the old woman awaited the decision of her fate were of a very different character. She had lain awake almost the whole night, thinking over the long life which she had spent within those walls. She had been married at eighteen, and now she was seventy. I wonder whether she felt in herself one tithe of the difference which these words imply. I do not believe she did; except at special moments we never feel ourselves old; we are, to ourselves, what we always were, the same creature, inexhaustible, unchangeable, notwithstanding all vulgar exterior transformation. Poor old Mrs. Murray at seventy, poor, aged, ruined, upon whom her children were to sit that day and give forth her sentence of banishment, her verdict of destitution, never more to call anything her own, to lodge in the house of another, to eat a stranger’s bread—was to her own knowledge the same girl, eighteen years old, who had opened bright eyes in that chamber in those early summer mornings fifty years ago when life was so young. Fifty years passed before her as she lay with her eyes turned to the wall. How many joys in them, how many sorrows! how tired she had lain down, how lightly risen up, how many plans she had pondered there, how many prayers she had murmured unheard of by any but God, prayers, many of them never answered, many forgotten even by herself, some, which she remembered best, granted almost as soon as said. How she had cried and wept in an agony, for example, for the life of her youngest child, and how it had been better almost from that hour! The child was her daughter, Mrs. MacKell, now a virtuous mother of a family; but after all to her own mother, perhaps it would not now have mattered very much had that prayer dropped unheard. How many recollections there are to look back on in seventy years, and how bewildering the effort to remember whether the dreamer lying there is eighteen, or forty, or seventy! and she to be judged and sentenced and know her doom to-day.

She did not shed any tear or make any complaint, but acknowledged to herself with the wonderful stoicism of the poor that it was natural, that nothing else was to be looked for. Jean and her husband would be kind—enough; they would give the worn-out mother food and shelter; they would not neglect nor treat her cruelly. All complaint was silent in her heart; but yet the events of this day were no “ploy” to her. She got up at her usual time, late now in comparison to the busy and active past, and came down with Jeanie’s help to the parlour, and seated herself in the arm-chair where she had sat for so many years. There she passed the morning very silent, spending the time with her own thoughts. She had told Jeanie what to do, to prepare for the early dinner, which they were all to eat together.

“You would be a good bairn,” she had said with a smile, “if you would take it upon you to do all this, Jeanie, and say nothing to me.”

Jeanie had sense enough to take her at her word, and thus all the morning she had been alone, sitting with eyes fixed on Benvohrlan, often with a strange smile on her face, pondering and thinking. She had her stocking in her hands, and knitted on and on, weaving in her musing soul with the thread. When her daughters came in she received them very kindly with a wistful smile, looking up into their faces, wondering if the sight of the mother who bore them had any effect upon these women. Still more wistfully she looked at the men who followed. Many a volume has been written about the love of parents, the love of mothers, its enthusiasms of hope and fancy, its adorations of the unworthy, its agony for the lost; but I do not remember that anyone has ventured to touch upon a still more terrible view of the subject, the disappointment, for example, with which such a woman as I have attempted to set before the reader—a woman full of high aspirations, noble generosities, and perhaps an unwarrantable personal pride, all intensified by the homely circumstances of life around her—sometimes looks upon the absolutely commonplace people whom she has brought into the world. She, too, has had her dreams about them while they were children and all things seemed possible—while they were youths with still some grace and freshness of the morning veiling their unheroic outlines. But a woman of seventy can cherish no fond delusions about her middle-aged sons and daughters who are to all intents and purposes as old as she is. What a dismal sense of failure must come into such a woman’s heart while she looks at them! Perhaps this is one reason why grandfathers and grandmothers throw themselves so eagerly into the new generation, by means of which human nature can always go on deceiving itself. Heavens! what a difference between the ordinary man or woman at fifty, and that ideal creature which he, or she, appeared to the mother’s eyes at fifteen! The old people gaze and gaze to see our old features in us; and who can express the blank of that disappointment, the cruel mortification of those old hopes, which never find expression in any words?

Mrs. Murray, from the household place where she had ruled so long, where she had brought up upon her very life-blood like the pelican, those same commonplace people—where she had succoured the poor, and entertained strangers, and fed from her heart two generations—looked wistfully, half wonderingly at them as they all entered, and sat down round her, to decide what was to be done with her. Something of a divine despair, like that God Himself might have felt when the creation he had pronounced good, turned to evil—but with a more poignant thrill of human anguish in the fact of her own utter powerlessness to move to good or to evil those independent souls which once had seemed all hers, to influence as she would—swept through her like a sudden storm. But to show any outward sign of this was impossible. Theirs now was the upper hand; they were in the height of life, and she was old. “When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not;” she said these words to herself with a piteous patience and submission; but unheard by any soul,—unless, indeed, it was by those sympathisers in Heaven, who hear so much, yet make no sign that we can hear or see.

They came in quite cheerfully all of them, full of the many and diversified affairs which, for the moment, they were to make the sacrifice of laying aside to settle the fate of their mother, and held over her body, as it were, a pleasant little family palaver.

“The children have gone down the loch for a pic-nic; they would have come in to see Granny, but I said you would have no time for them to-day. The weather is just wonderful for this time of the year, or I never would have allowed such a thing.”

“It’s all very well for you town-folk to praise up a good day,” said Mr. Campbell, “which is no doubt pleasant when it comes to them that have no interest in the land—but a kind of an insult to us after all the soft weather that has ruined the corn. What’s the use of one good day except for your pic-nics and nonsense? nothing but to make the handful of wheat sprout the faster. And the glass is down again—We’ll have more rain the morn.”

“You’ll find it very dry in the East country, Chairles,” said Mrs. Campbell; “more pleasant for walking, but very stour and troublesome to keep a house clean, and a great want of water. Your sister Marg’ret was aye ill to please about the weather; but after a’ that’s come and gone, I hope she’s no so fanciful now?”

“You’ll be setting up a gig soon?” said James Murray, “or, perhaps, you’ve done it already? It’s expensive, but it’s a kind of necessity for a doctor.”

“Indeed I cannot see that; a strong young man like Charles that’s well able to walk! but some folk are always taking care of themselves,” said Mrs. MacKell. “In Glasgow, the richest men in the place think nothing of a walk, wet or dry—and my bairns, I assure you, are never spoiled with such luxuries.”

“A gig to a doctor is like a spade to a labouring man,” said Robert Campbell, sententiously; “that’s an expense that I approve. Keep you up appearances, Charles—that’s as long as you can do it out of your own pocket,” he said with a laugh, thrusting his hand deep into his own.

“I know where you could lay your hand on a very decent machine, cheaper, I answer for’t, than anything you’ll get in the East country,” said James.

“And I am sure you have plenty of old harness that could be cleaned up, Robert,” said Mrs. Campbell, “if it’s thought necessary. To be sure, if he was sent for in a hurry to some country place, perhaps, or the other side of the town—”

“Thank you all,” said the young doctor, “but I have a—conveyance. I could not do without it. I took it from my predecessor, along with the house and the goodwill.”

“Did you hear what he said?” said Mrs. MacKell, aside, to Mrs. Campbell, “a conveyance, not a gig, as we were all saying. Depend upon it, it’s some grand landau, or something, where Marg’ret can lie and take her ease. To think how my mother spoiled these bairns!”

Mrs. Murray took no part in all their talk. She sat with her old eyes sadly turned upon them, eyes that were clear with the pallid liquid light of a sky just cleared from rain. I think the only one who was at all interested in the old woman, beyond the matter-of-fact interest which belonged to her as the cause of the meeting, was Edgar, who had seated himself close to her, and who now laid his hand, in a silent sympathy which nobody else felt, upon the hand with which she held the arm of her chair. Her hand was grey-white, the colour of old age, with all the veins visible on the wrinkled surface. When he put his young warm hand upon it, it felt almost as cold as death.

“Don’t you think,” he said, with some abruptness, “that my grandmother’s concerns ought to be settled before we talk of anything else?”

They had all, as I have said, a respect for Edgar, and his voice had an immediate effect.

“That’s true,” said Mr. Campbell, “it would be better to settle everything before dinner;” and with this comfortable levity they all gathered more closely round the table. The drawing in of chairs and the little noise of coughing and clearing throats which heralded the commencement of a new subject, occupied the first minute; then James Murray edged slightly away from the table the chair which he had drawn close to it, and prepared to speak. But before he had opened his lips an unforeseen interruption arose; Mrs. Murray herself took the initiative, a thing entirely unexpected by her children, who had felt, with a sense of security, that they had her fairly in hand.

“Bairns,” she said slowly, and at first in a low tone, while they all turned upon her with surprise, “bairns, I am leaving you to settle everything. I am old; I would fain have gone to them that’s passed before me, but the Lord hasna been of my mind. Things have gone badly with the farm, partly by His providence, partly by my fault—you know that as well as I do. In my time, I’ve commanded you and done what I thought best. Now the power has gone out of my hands; settle as ye will, and I’ll no complain, so long as every man has his ain, and no debt is left, nor any person to rise up against me and call me an unjust dealer. I’ve done my best for you while it was in my power. Now, do your best, I’ll no complain. Beggars should not be choosers. It’s all in your hands.”

“Mother, you shouldna speak like that! as if you doubted that we could think of anything but your good,” cried both her daughters in a breath; “and as for beggars—not one of us would use such a word.”

“It’s what I am,” said the old woman firmly. “And there’s but one word I have to say. You ken all of you what I would like best; that’s all I’ll say; every one of you kens what I would like best. But, failing that, I’ll do whatever’s settled on. I’ll no complain.”

“What you would like, we all know very well,” said James Murray, hastily; “but it’s impossible, mother, impossible. You canna afford the farm, you canna afford to keep up a house, doing nothing for it, or to keep up a family. There’s you, and we’ll do our best.”

She made a little gesture with her hands, and relapsed into the stillness which she had not broken when they talked of other affairs. The discrowned monarch sat still to let whoever would take her sceptre from her. She took up the stocking she had laid in her lap, and began knitting again, looking at them with eyes out of which the wistfulness had faded. An almost stern submission had replaced the wondering anxious look with which she had looked round to see if anyone would understand her, if any would deal with her as she had dealt by them.

“For you see,” continued James Murray, doggedly, “mother, we are none of us rich, to be guided by your fancies. If we were great ones of this earth, and you the auld Duchess, say, for example’s sake, you might have your will, whatever it cost. But we’re all poor folk—or comparatively poor folk. We may give you a welcome to our houses, such as they are, and a share of what we have; but as for siller we have not got it, and we cannot give you what we have not got to give.”

“That’s just about the real state of the case,” said Robert Campbell. “There are many things more rife among us than siller. We’ve all sense enough to see what’s for our advantage, and we’re all industrious folk, doing our best; but siller is not rife. As for us, Jean and me have long made up our minds what to do. It’s our duty, or at least it’s her duty, as the eldest of the daughters; and your mother was always a kind guid-mother to me, and never interfered or made mischief; so I would never oppose Jean’s righteous desire. We’ll take the old leddy in. She shall have a room to herself, and nothing to do, one way or other, more than she pleases. If she likes to do any small turn in the house, in the way of helping, well and good; but nothing will be asked from her. And anything that the rest of you think that you could spare—I’m not a man to haggle about my good-mother’s board. She shall have her share of all that’s going the same as one of ourselves; but if any of you have anything to spare——”

“Would it not be more satisfactory to us all, and more agreeable to my grandmother,” said Edgar, suddenly, “if, without charging Mr. Campbell above the rest, we were to make up a little income for her, to enable her to keep her own house?”

This suggestion fell like a sudden cannon-ball into the group. There was a universal movement.

“Well, well, I’m no forcing myself on anybody. Try what you can do,” cried Campbell, offended, pushing his chair from the table.

“It’s just all stuff and nonsense!” cried his wife, reddening with anger.

The other two elder people regarded Edgar with a mixture of disapproval and dismay. And the young doctor, the only one of the party who showed some sympathy for him, grew very red, and hesitated and cleared his throat as if to speak—but said nothing. After a moment’s pause, James Murray turned upon the inconsiderate speaker with a certain solemnity.

“Who are you, young man,” he said, “that you should put in your word and do what you can to unsettle a well-considered family arrangement? You heard me say not ten minutes since that just the thing we were wanting in was money. We’re no in a position to make up incomes either for auld wives or young lads. We’re all ready to acknowledge our duty to my mother, and to pay it in kind according to our ability. If she tires of Jean, she may come to me; none of us would shut our houses against her; but as for an income, and to leave her free to make her house a refuge for the destitute, as she has aye done, more’s the pity—”

“Mother,” cried Mrs. MacKell, suddenly, “what for are you looking so at me? Do you think I wouldna rather, far rather, see you in your own house? But I’m no an independent woman as you’ve been a’ your days. I’m a man’s wife that has plenty to do with his siller. I brought him not a sixpence, as ye well know, but a large expensive family, that wants a great deal mair than ever we got, as I often tell them. And what can I do? I went to my man without a penny, and how can I ask him to spend his siller on my folk? Mother,” and here Mrs. MacKell burst into hasty sudden crying, half-vexation, half-shame, “it’s awfu’ unkind, when you ken how I am situate, to give such looks at me!”

“I gave you no looks, Agnes,” said the old woman. “Oh, Sirs, hold all your tongues. I’m the mother that bore you, and never counted the cost for aught that was in my power to get for you. But I will have no strife of tongues over me. Ye shall not quarrel what you’re to give, or how little you’re to give. I canna bear it. Edgar, my bonnie man, you mean well, but every word is another stab. Robert Campbell, I take your offer kindly. I’ll no be much trouble. I canna promise that I’ll no last long, for that’s in the Lord’s hand, and waes me, I canna cut it short, no by an hour. But it’s little I want, and I’ll give little trouble—”

She paused, with a piteous smile upon her face, gulping down something which rose in her throat. With this smile she made her abdication, looking round upon them with an anguish of submission and endurance so curiously compounded of a hundred different ingredients of pain, each giving sharpness and poignancy to the others, that to describe them all exceeds my power.

“We’ll go ben and get our dinner,” she added hurriedly; “we’ll say no more about it. I take it a’ for granted, and the rest you can settle among yourselves.”

“But I cannot take it for granted,” said Edgar. “Stop a little. I will not give any stabs, my old mother. Look here, my aunts and uncles.” He said this with a momentary hesitation, with the half-smile which they resented; but still they listened, having a respect for him and his independence. “I am not like you,” said Edgar, still with that half-smile. “The only thing I have is money, a little, not worth speaking of, but still it is mine to do what I like with it. Is it not true that there is some talk of building a new farmhouse for the new farmer, as this one is old and in want of repair? I think I heard you say so the other day.”

“It’s true enough—what’s about it?” said Campbell, shortly.

“Then my grandmother shall stay here,” said Edgar, decisively; “she shall not be turned out of her home, either by her creditors, or—by her sons and daughters. I have nobody to stop me, neither wife, nor sister, nor child, nor duty. Thank heaven, I have enough left for that! If you will take the trouble to settle all about it, Mr. Campbell, I shall be grateful; it is all we will ask you for, not your hospitality, only a little trouble. I don’t suppose the Duke will make any difficulties, nor the young farmer whom I saw yesterday. Thank you for your kind intentions. My grandmother will not be able to set up a refuge for the destitute, but no doubt she will serve you all when you require her services, as she has been used to do all her life,” said Edgar, with some excitement. “Mother, not a word; it is all done, past my power of changing as well as yours.”

They all sat and looked at him with momentary stupefaction, staring, turning to give questioning looks at each other. Was the young man mad? When Edgar ended by pushing some papers across the table to Campbell, they all drew close to look, James Murray taking out eagerly, and putting on with hands that trembled, a large pair of clumsy spectacles. All the four heads of the elder people clustered about these documents; they read the papers each over the other’s shoulder.

“It’s all in order—all in order. Young idiot! he’s bound himself as long as she lives,” Campbell muttered in an undertone. “Why the deevil didn’t ye let us know your intentions and save us a’ this trouble?” he exclaimed aloud, putting away the women from behind him with a gesture, and turning with well-put-on indignation to the young man, whose excitement had not yet calmed down.

“Saftly, saftly,” said James Murray, “we must not let ourselves be carried away by our feelings. I approve the lad; it’s just what I would have done myself had I been without the burden of a family, and plenty of siller to come and go upon. I’ll shake hands with you, Edgar, my lad; it’s well done and well thought! Robert, here, may have a little feeling on the subject, as being the one that offered his house; but for my part, I’ve no hesitation in saying it’s well done, Edgar—well done—just what, in your circumstances, I would have done myself!”

“By George! you’re a clever fellow, Jamie Murray!” cried Campbell, with a loud laugh.

The two women did not say anything; they looked at each other, and Mrs. MacKell, who was the most soft-hearted, began to cry.

“It’s what we would all have liked to have done,” she said feebly, after an interval.

Her sister turned round sharply and scolded Jeanie, who had been sitting behind backs looking on, and who now looked up at Edgar with a face so radiant that it struck her aunt with sharp offence—more sharp than the real offence of the stranger’s superior generosity, of which it was a reflection.

“What are you doing there,” she said, “you little idle cutty? Did not Granny tell you to see after the dinner? It may be good for her, but it’s ruination to you, if you had the sense to see it. Dinna let me see you sit there, smil—smiling at a young lad! I wonder you dinna think shame! It’s all my mother’s fault,” she added bitterly, placing herself in the chair by the window, which Jeanie, in dismay and tears, hastily evacuated; “we were kept to our work and kept in order, in our day; but she’s spoiled every creature that’s come near her since. I’m glad I’ve nae girls mysel that she can ruin as she’s ruined Jeanie!”

“Poor thing, she has nae mother to keep her right,” said the softer sister.

I think, for my part, that the sharp offence and bitterness of the women at the sudden turn that things had taken, showed a higher moral sense than the eager satisfaction with which, after the first moment, the men received it. Murray and Campbell both felt the immediate relief, as far as they themselves were concerned. The women felt first the shame and stigma of not having attempted to do for their mother what this stranger was so ready to do. The result was much less pleasant and less amiable to witness, but it showed, I think, a higher feeling of right and wrong.

CHAPTER VI.

A Party in a Parlour.

The dinner which followed was not, the first part of it at least, a very comfortable meal. Mrs. Murray herself was profoundly shaken by the conference altogether. She was unable to say anything to her grandson except the almost wild “No, lad; no, Edgar, my bonnie man!” with which she had endeavoured to stop him at first. After this she had not uttered a word. She had taken his hand between her old and worn hands, and raised her face as if to God—praying for blessings on him? No—I do not think her mind was capable of such an effort—she was looking up to the Divine Friend who had been her refuge in everything these seventy years, in a strange rapture of surprise and joy. How much part the sudden change in her circumstances had to do with the joy, I cannot tell—very little I think, infinitesimally little. “I have one son, one true son, after all; heart of my heart, and soul of my soul!” This was the predominating thought in her mind, the half-ecstatic feeling which flooded her old being like sudden sunshine. Amid all the griefs and disappointments to which such a soul is liable, there remains to one now and then the tender and generous delight of seeing others do by her as she would have done by them. How sweet it is; before all delight in gifts, or even in affection! We think of the golden rule more often in the way of a command, employing it to touch our own souls to languid duty; but there are occasions when it is given back to us, so to speak, in the way of recompense, vivified and quickened into rapture. This old woman had practised it as she could all her life, and others had not done to her as she had done to them; but here, at the end of her existence, came one—her reward, one heir of her nature, one issue of her soul. Thus she had her glimpse of heaven in the very moment of her lowest humiliation. She had done little personally for him—little—nothing—except to harm him; but she had done much for others, sacrificing herself that they might live, and the stranger, in whose training she had had no hand, who had with her no link of union but the mystic tie of blood, gave back to her full measure, heaped up, and running over. I must leave to the imagination of the reader the keen satisfaction and joy, sharp and poignant almost as pain, with which this aged soul, worn out and weary, received full in her heart, all at once, as by a shot or thunderbolt, the unthought of, unhoped-for recompense.

The men, as I have said, were the first to reconcile themselves to the sudden revolution. If any thrill of shame came over them, it was instantly quenched, and ceased to influence the hardened mail, beaten by much vicissitude of weather, which covered them. The women were thinner-skinned, so to speak, more easily touched in their pride, and were sensible of the irony with which, half-consciously to himself, Edgar had spoken. But, perhaps, the person most painfully affected of all was the young doctor, who had listened to Edgar with a painful flush on his face, and with a pang of jealous pain and shame, not easy to bear. He went up to the old lady as soon as the discussion was over, and sat down close by her, and held a long conversation in an undertone.

“Grandmother,” he said, the flush returning and covering his face with painful heat, “you do not think me ungrateful or slow to interfere? You know it is not want of will, but want of means. You know—”

“Charlie, was I asking anything, that you speak so to me? I know you could not interfere. You are in their debt still, poor lad?”

“Yes, I am in their debt still. I don’t know how to get out of it; it grinds me to the ground!” cried the young man. “But what can I do?”

Mrs. Murray patted his hand softly with her old worn fingers; but she was silent, with that silence which the weak nature, eager for approbation, but unable to make a bold effort after good, feels so profoundly.

“You don’t say anything,” said Dr. Charles, with a mixture of petulance. “You think I might have done more?”

“No, Charlie, no,” said the old woman; “as you say not. I would be glad to see you free of this bondage; but you must know best yourself.”

“There is so much to do,” said the young doctor. “I must get a position. I must make an appearance like others in my profession. So many things are necessary that you never think of here in a country place; and you know Margaret has no health to speak of. There is so much expense in every way.”

“She was always handless,” said Mrs. Murray. “She should come to me with little Bell, and let you take your chance. Living costs but little here, and what is enough for one is enough for two,” said the old woman, with her perennial and instinctive liberality of heart.

“Enough for one! Jeanie is going to leave you then, as the Campbells told me,” said the young man hastily. “He is to marry her as they said?”

“I ken nothing about marrying or giving in marriage,” said the grandmother, with some severity of tone. “If that is still in your mind, Charlie—”

“It is not in my mind—it was never in my mind,” he said with an eagerness which was almost passionate. “She has a lovely face, but she never was or could be a fit wife for a man in my position. There never was anything in that.”

“Charlie, my man, you think too much of your position,” said the old woman, shaking her head; “and if there was nothing in it, why should you gloom and bend your brows at the thought that Edgar might care for the bonnie face as well as you? He does not, more’s the pity.”

“And why should you say more’s the pity? Do you want to be rid of Jeanie? Do you want to be left alone?”

“I’m but a bruised reed for anyone to trust to,” she said. “Soon, soon I’ll have passed away, and the place that now knows me will know me no more. I would be glad to see my poor bairn in somebody’s hand that would last longer than me.”

A momentary flush of strong feeling passed over the young man’s face.

“Grandmother,” he said, “you were too good to me. If I had been bred a farmer like yourself—”

“You would have made but a weirdless farmer, Charlie, my man. It’s not the trade that does it,” said Mrs. Murray, with some sadness. “But Marg’ret had better come to me. She may hinder you, but she’ll no help you. The bairns are maybe right; I was injudicious, Charlie, and grieved for you that were all delicate things without a mother. I should have known better. You are little able to fend for yourselves in this world, either Marg’ret or you.”

“I don’t know why you should say so, grandmother. I am making my way in my profession,” said Dr. Charles, not without offence, “and Margaret is very greatly thought of, and asked to the best houses. If you have nothing more to blame yourself with than you have in our case—”

Mrs. Murray sighed, but she made no answer. It was not for nothing that her daughters had reproached her. Charles Murray and his sister Margaret had been the two youngest of the flock, her eldest son Tom’s children, whom the brave old woman had taken into her house, and brought up with the labour of her own hands. The others were scattered about the world, fighting their way in all regions; but Charlie and Margaret had been as apples of her eye. She had done everything for them, bringing up the son to a learned profession, and “making a lady of” the gentle and pretty girl, who was of a stock less robust than the other Murrays. And as Mrs. Murray had no patent of exemption from the failures that follow sometimes the best efforts, she had not succeeded in this case. Charles Murray, without being absolutely unsuccessful, had fulfilled none of the high hopes entertained concerning him; and Margaret had made a foolish marriage, and had been left in a few years a penniless widow dependent upon her brother. No one knew exactly what the two were doing now. They were “genteel” and “weirdless,” living, it was feared, above their means, and making no attempt to pay back the money which had been lent by their wealthier friends to set the young doctor afloat.

This was why the children she had trained so carefully could give their old mother no help. Margaret had cried bitterly when she heard that the old home was about to be broken up, and Charles’s heart was torn with a poignant sense of inability to help. But the tears and the pain would have done Mrs. Murray little good, and they were not of any profound importance to the brother and sister, both of whom were capable of some new piece of extravagance next day by way of consoling themselves. But though Mrs. Murray was not aware of it, the sharp shock of Edgar’s unlooked-for munificence towards her, and the jealousy and shame with which Dr. Charles witnessed it, was the most salutary accident that had happened to him all his life. The contrast of his own conduct, he who was so deeply indebted to her, and that of his unknown cousin, gave such a violent concussion to all his nerves as the young man had never felt before; and whatever might be the after result of this shock, its present issue was not agreeable. A sullen shadow came over him at the homely dinner to which they all sat down with such changed feelings. He had been the only one to whom Edgar had turned instinctively for sympathy, and Edgar was the first to feel this change. James Murray and Robert Campbell were the only two who kept up the languid conversation, and their talk, we need not add, was not of a very elevated kind.

“The mutton’s good, mother,” said James; “you’ve aye good mutton at Loch Arroch; not like the stuff that’s vended to us at I canna tell how much the pound. That’s a great advantage you have in the country. Your own mutton, or next thing to it; your own fowls and eggs, and all that. You should go on keeping poultry; you were a very good henwife in the old days, when we were all young; and there’s nothing that sells better than new-laid eggs and spring chickens. Though you give up the farm, I would advise you to keep them on still.”

“And I would not wonder but you might have grass enough for a cow,” said Campbell. “A cow’s a great thing in a house. There’s aye the milk whatever happens, and a pickle butter is never lost. It sells at as much as eighteen pence a pound on the other side of the loch, when those Glasgow people are down for the saut water. Asking your pardon, Agnes, I was not meaning the like of you; there are plenty Glasgow people that are very decent folk, but it cannot be denied that they make everything very dear.”

“And what is that but an advantage to everybody as long as we can pay, aye, the double if we like?” cried Mrs. MacKell, forgetting her previous plea of comparative poverty. “We like everything of the best, I don’t deny it; and who has a better right, seeing our men work hard for every penny they make?”

“For that matter so do the colliers and that kind of cattle, that consume all they earn in eating and drinking,” said Campbell. “I like a good dinner myself; but the way you Glasgow folk give yourselves up to it, beats me. That’s little to the purpose, however, in the present case. James’s advice is very good advice, and so you’ll find is mine. I would not object to being at the expense of buying in that bonnie brown cow, the one you fancied, Jean—women are aye fanciful in these matters—if there will be anybody about the house that could supper and milk a cow?”

He looked doubtfully at Jeanie as he spoke, and they all looked at her, some suspiciously, some contemptuously. They all seemed to Jeanie to reproach her that she was not a strong, robust “lass” ready to help her grandmother.

“I can milk Brounie; she’s so gentle,” said Jeanie, half under her breath, looking wistfully at her critics. James Murray uttered a suppressed “humph!”

“A bonnie young woman for a farm-house!” he said, “that can milk a cow when it’s gentle. I hope you’ll save the lad’s siller as much as possible, mother; no running into your old ways, taking folk into your bosom, or entertaining strangers on the smallest provocation, as you used to do.”

“I hope my grandmother will do precisely as she likes—in the way that pleases her best,” said Edgar with emphasis.

“I am saying,” said Campbell with emphasis, “a cow; and the cocks and hens, according to James. An honest penny is aye a good thing, however it’s got. If young Glen gets the farm, as is likely, he’ll be wanting a lodging till the new house is built. I would take the lad in and give him accommodation, if it was me. In short, there’s a variety of things that would be little trouble, and would show a desire to make the best of what’s given you; and any assistance that I can be of, or Jean—”

“Oh my mother’s above my help or yours either,” said Mrs. Campbell, with some bitterness. “You need not push yourself in, Rob, when neither you nor me are wanted.”

Mrs. Murray listened to all this with grave patience and forbearance. She smiled faintly at her daughter’s petulance, and shook her head. “Bairns,” she said, gently, “I guided my own concerns before you were born.” It was the only reproof she attempted to administer, and it was followed by a pause, during which the sound of knives and forks was very audible, each individual of the party plying his as for a wager, in the sudden stillness which each affronted person thought it doubly incumbent on him and her to keep up. Mrs. Murray looked round upon them all with a smile, which gradually softened into suppressed but genial humour. “I hope you are all making a good dinner,” she said.

The afternoon after this passed as a Sunday afternoon often passes in a family gathering. They all stood a little on their defence, but, with a keen appreciation of the fact, that the mother, whom they all intended to advise and lecture, had certainly got the upper hand, and had been on the verge of laughing at them, if she had not actually done so, were prudent, and committed themselves no further. They all went out after dinner to see the site where the new farm-house was to be built, and to speculate on the way in which young Glen would manage the farm, and whether he would succeed better than its previous occupant. The women of the party visited “the beasts,” as the men had done before dinner, and the men strolled out to the fields, and weighed in their hands the damp ears of corn, and shook their heads over the length of the straw, and pointed out to each other how badly the fields were arranged, and how the crops had been repeated year after year. “It’s time it was all in other hands,” they said to each other. As for Dr. Charles, he avoided the other members of the party—the uncles who might ask for the money they had lent him, and the aunts who might inquire with an undue closeness of criticism into his proceedings and those of his sister. He sat and talked with his grandmother in the parlour, answering her questions, and making conversation with her in a way which was somewhat formal. In short, it was very like a Sunday afternoon—and the sense of being in their best clothes, and having nothing to do, and being, as it were, bound over to keep the peace, was very wearisome to all these good people. The little excitement of pulling to pieces, so to speak, the house which had sheltered and reared them, was over, and thus a certain flat of disappointment and everyday monotony mingled with the sense of something unusual which was in their meeting. Their purpose was foiled altogether, and the business manqué, yet they could not but profess pleasure in the unexpected turn that things had taken. It was very like a Sunday afternoon.

And it is impossible to tell what a relief it was to all, when the big fishing-boat came heavily round the corner with the picnic party, and Jeanie, in her plain brown frock, ran down to the landing to bid her cousins come into tea. There were some six or seven in the boat, slightly damp and limp, but in high spirits; three of whom were girls, much more gaily dressed than Jeanie, yet with a certain general resemblance to her. They all rushed fluttering in their gay ribbons up to the farm-house, glad of the novelty, and threw themselves upon “Granny,” whom they admired without the criticism in which their mother indulged less than her brothers and sisters. They did not take much notice of Jeanie, but Dr. Charles was full of interest for them, and the unknown Edgar, who was still more emphatically “a gentleman,” excited their intensest curiosity. “Where is he? which is him?” they whispered to each other; and when Bell, the youngest, exclaimed with disappointment, that he was just like Charlie Murray, and nothing particular after all, her two elder sisters snubbed her at once. “If you cannot see the difference you should hold your tongue,” said Jeanie MacKell, who called herself Jane, and had been to a school in England, crowning glory of a Scotch girl on her promotion. “Not but what Charles is very nice-looking, and quite a gentleman,” said Margaret, more meekly, who was the second daughter. The presence of these girls, and of the young men in attendance upon them, to wit Andrew, their brother, and two friends of his own class, young men for whom natural good looks did not do so much as for the young women, and who were, perhaps, better educated, without being half so presentable—made the tea-table much merrier and less embarrassed than the dinner had been. The MacKells ended by being all enthralled by Edgar, whose better manners told upon them, (as a higher tone always tells upon women,) whose superiority to their former attendants was clear as daylight, and who was not stiff and afraid to commit himself like Charles Murray; “quite a gentleman,” though they all held the latter to be. As for Edgar himself, he was so heartily thankful for the relief afforded by this in-road of fresh guests, that he was willing to think the very best of his cousins, and to give them credit—that is the female part of them—for being the best of the family he had yet seen. He walked with them to their boat, and put them in, when sunset warned them to cross the loch without delay, and laughingly excused himself from accepting their eager invitations, only on the ground that “business” demanded his departure on the next day. Mrs. MacKell took him aside before she embarked, and shook his hand with tears gathering in her eyes.

“I could not say anything before them all,” she said, with an emotion which was partly real; “but I’ll never forget what you’ve done for my mother—and oh, what a comfort it is to me to think I leave her in her ain old house! God bless you for it!”

“Good-bye,” said Edgar, cheerily, and he stood on the banks and watched the boat with a smile. True feeling enough, perhaps, and yet how oddly mingled! He laughed to himself as he went back to the house with an uneasy, mingling of pain and shame.

CHAPTER VII.

Gentility.

James Murray went away arranging in his own mind that he would send his youngest daughter “across” before the winter came on, “to get her strength up.” “One bairn makes little difference in the way of meals, and she can bring some tea and sugar in a present,” he said to himself; while Dr. Charles evidenced still more instantaneously the family opinion by saying at once that he should stay where he was till to-morrow.

“It seems much more natural to be here than in any other house,” he said caressingly to his grandmother.

She smiled, but she made no reply. Even, she liked it, for the position of a superior dispensing favours had been natural to her all her life, and the power to retain this position was not one of the least advantages that Edgar’s liberality gave her. But even while she liked it, she saw through the much less noble sentiment of her descendants, and a passing pang mingled with her pleasure. She said nothing to Dr. Charles; but when Edgar gave her his arm for the brief evening walk which she took before going to rest, she made to him a curious apology for the rest. Charles was standing on the loch-side looking out, half-jealous that it was Edgar who naturally took charge of the old mother, and half glad to escape out of Edgar’s way.

“We mustna judge them by ourselves,” she said, in a deprecating tone. “Charlie was aye a weak lad, meaning no harm—and used to depend upon somebody. Edgar, they are not to be judged like you and me.”

“No,” said Edgar, with a smile; then rapidly passing from the subject which he could not enter on. “Does he want to marry Jeanie?” he asked.

“That I canna tell—that I do not know. He cannot keep his eyes off her bonnie face; but, Edgar, the poor lad has strange fancies. He has taken it into his head to be genteel—and Marg’ret, poor thing, is genteel.”

“What has that to do with it?” said Edgar, laughing.

“We are not genteel, Jeanie and me,” said the old woman, with a gleam of humour. “But, Edgar, my man, still you must not judge Charlie. You are a gentleman, that nobody could have any doubt of; but the danger of being a poor man’s son, and brought up to be a gentleman, is that you’re never sure of yourself. You are always in a fear to know if you are behaving right—if you are doing something you ought not to do.”

“Then, perhaps,” said Edgar, “my cousin would have been happier if he had not been brought up, as you say, to be a gentleman.”

“What could I make him? Farming’s but a poor trade for them that have little capital and little energy. Maybe you will say a Minister? but it’s a responsibility bringing up a young man to be a Minister, when maybe he will have no turn that way but just seek a priest’s office for a piece of bread. A good doctor serves both God and man; and Charlie is not an ill doctor,” she added, hurriedly. “His very weakness gives him a soft manner, and as he’s aye on the outlook whether he’s pleasing you or not, it makes him quick to notice folk’s feelings in general. Sick men, and still more sick women, like that.”

“You are a philosopher, grandmother,” said Edgar.

“Na, na, not that,” said the old woman; “but at seventy you must ken something of your fellow-creature’s ways, or you must be a poor creature indeed.”

Meanwhile Charles Murray had gone back to the house, and was talking to Jeanie, who for some reason which she did not herself quite divine, had been shy of venturing out this special evening with the others. Perhaps the young doctor thought she was waiting for him. At all events it was a relief to go and talk to one in whom no criticism could be.

“You feel quite strong and well again, Jeanie?” he said.

“Oh yes, quite strong and well—quite better,” she said, looking up at him with that soft smile of subjection and dependence which most people to whom it is addressed find so sweet.

“You should not say quite better,” he said, smiling too, though the phrase would by times steal even from his own educated lips. “I wonder sometimes, Jeanie, after passing some months in England as you did, that you should still continue so Scotch. I like it, of course—in a way.”

Here Jeanie, whose face had overcast, brightened again and smiled—a smile which this time, however, did not arrest him in his critical career.

“I like it, in a way,” said Charles, doubtfully. “Here on Loch Arroch side it is very sweet, and appropriate to the place; but if you were going out—into the world, Jeanie.”

“No fear of that,” said Jeanie, with a soft laugh.

“On the contrary, there is much fear of it—or much hope of it, I should say. There are many men who would give all they have in the world for a smile from your sweet face. I mean,” said the young man, withdrawing half a step backward, and toning himself down from this extravagance, “I mean that there is no doubt you could marry advantageously—if you liked to exert yourself.”

“You should not speak like that to me,” cried Jeanie, with a sudden hot flush; “there is nothing of the kind in my head.”

“Say your mind, not your head, Jeanie; and like the dear good girl you are, say head, not heed,” said Dr. Charles with a curious mixture of annoyance and admiration; and then he added, drawing closer. “Jeanie, do you not think you would like to go to school?”

“To school? I am not a little bairn,” said Jeanie with some indignation, “I have had my schooling, all that Granny thought I wanted. Besides,” she continued proudly, “I must look after Granny now.”

“She has asked Margaret to come to her,” said the young man, “and don’t you think, Jeanie, if you could be sent to a school for a time—not to learn much you know, not for lessons or anything of that kind; but to get more used to the world, and to what you would have to encounter if you went into the world—and perhaps to get a few accomplishments, a little French, or the piano, or something like that?”

“What would I do, learning French and the piano?” said Jeanie; her countenance had over-clouded during the first part of his speech, but gradually gave way to wonder and amusement as he went on. “Are you thinking of Jeanie MacKell who can play tunes, and speak such fine English? Granny would not like that, and neither would I.”

“But Granny is not the only person in the world,” he said, “there are others who would like it. Men like it, Jeanie; they like to see their wife take her place with anyone, and you cannot always be with Granny—you will marry some day.”

Jeanie’s fair soft countenance glowed like the setting sun, a bright and tender consciousness lit up her features; her blue eyes shone. Dr. Charles, who had his back to the loch, as he stood at the farm-house door, did not perceive that Edgar had come into sight with Mrs. Murray leaning on his arm.

“May-be all that may be true,” said Jeanie, “I cannot tell; but in the meantime I cannot leave Granny, for Granny has nobody but me.”

“She has asked my sister Margaret, as I told you—”

“Margaret instead of me!” said Jeanie, with a slight tone of wonder.

“It is strange how disagreeable you all are to my sister,” said Dr. Charles with some impatience. “It need not be instead of you; but Granny has asked Margaret, and she and the little one will come perhaps before winter sets in—the change would do them good. I should be left alone then,” he said, softening, “and if Margaret stays with Granny, I should be left always alone. Jeanie, if you would but get a little education and polish, and make yourself more like what a man wishes his wife to be—”

Jeanie was looking behind him all the time with a vague dreamy smile upon her face. “If that is a’ he wants!” she said dreamily to herself. She was thinking not of the man before her, whose heart, such as it was, was full of her image; but of the other man approaching, who did not think of Jeanie except as a gentle and affectionate child. If that was a’ he wanted! though even in her imaginative readiness to find everything sublime that Edgar did, there passed through Jeanie’s mind a vague pang to think that he would pay more regard to French and the piano, than to her tender enthusiast passion, the innocent adoration of her youth.

“If you would do that, Jeanie—to please me!” said the unconscious young Doctor, taking her hand.

“Here is Granny coming,” said Jeanie hastily, “and—Mr. Edgar. Go ben the house, please, and never mind me. I have to see that the rooms are right and all ready. Are you tired, Granny? You have had a sore day. Mr. Edgar, say good night to her now, she ought to go to her bed.”