THE QUIET HEART
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.

THE
Q U I E T H E A R T

BY THE
AUTHOR OF “KATIE STEWART”
SECOND EDITION
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLIV

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE.

THE QUIET HEART.

CHAPTER I.

“Ye’ll no ken, Jenny, if Miss Menie’s in?”

“And what for should I no ken?” exclaimed the hot and impatient Jenny Durward, sole servant, housekeeper, and self-constituted guardian of Mrs. Laurie of Burnside, and her young fatherless daughter. “Do ye think ony ane comes or gangs in the house out of my knowledge? And where should Miss Menie be but in, sitting at her seam in the mistress’s parlour, at this hour of the day?”

“I was meaning nae offence,” said meek Nelly Panton: “I’m sure ye ken, Jenny woman, I wouldna disturb the very cat by the fire if it was just me; but my mother, you see, has ta’en an ill turn, and there’s nae peace wi’ her, day or night, a’ for naething but because she’s anxious in her mind—and if you would just let me get a word o’ Miss Menie—”

“Am I hindering ye?” cried the indignant Jenny; “she’s no ill to be seen, in her wilful way, even on wandering about the garden, damp roads or dry; but for a’ the whims I’ve kent in her head, ae time and anither, I never heard of her setting up for either skill or wisdom past the common. I reckon she never had a sair head hersel—what kind of a helper could she be to your mother? and if she’s heard of a sair heart, that’s a’ the length her knowledge gangs—what good is Miss Menie to do to you?”

“I’m sure I’m no meaning ony ill,” said Nelly, disconsolately, sitting down on a wooden stool with passive resignation; “and it’s aye kent o’ me that I never provokit onybody a’ my born days. I’m just wanting to speak a word to the young leddy, that’s a’.”

Now Nelly Panton, meekly passive as she was, had an eminent gift in the way of provocation, and kept in a perpetual fever the warmer tempers in her neighbourhood. Jenny, virtuously resolved to command herself, went out with sufficient abruptness to her kitchen door, to “fuff,” as she herself called it, her incipient passion away. The visitor took no notice of Jenny’s withdrawal from the field. Slow pertinacity, certain of ultimate success, calmed away all excitement from Nelly. She had taken her place with perfect composure, to wait, though it might be for hours, till the person she wished to see came to her call.

It was a day of early spring, and had rained plentifully in the morning. Light white clouds, tossed and blown about by a fantastic wind, threw their soft shadow on a clear deep sky of blue; and raindrops, glittering in the sunshine, hung upon flowers and branches, and fell now and then in a gleam from the shaken hedge or garden fruit-trees. The garden paths were wet—the road without had a flowing rivulet of accumulated rain, which almost made as much ringing with its hasty footsteps as did the burn itself under the little bridge which crossed the way—and the blue-slated roof of this house of Burnside blazed like a slanted mirror in the eyes of the full sun.

Not the faintest shade of architectural pretensions dignified this house of Burnside. Four substantial walls of rough grey stone, a slated roof, with but one projecting attic window to break its slope—a door in the gable where one would least have expected a door to be—and windows breaking the wall just where the builder found it convenient that the wall should be broken. The house stood upon a little knoll, the ground on all sides sloping downward,—at one hand to the course of the burn—at the other, to the edge of the plantation which benevolently threw up a line of tall firs to screen its human neighbours from the unfriendly east. Close upon the very edge of the walls pressed the soft grass of the lawn; some spring-flowers looked out from little bits of border soil here and there; and a fairy larch stood half-way up the ascent on the sunniest side, shaking itself free of the encumbering rain with a pretty, coquettish grace, and throwing a glistening flash of little diamonds, now and then, as if in sport, over the fluttering hair and sunny face, which seem to have a natural sisterhood and companionship with the free and graceful tree.

Hair that was smoothly shaded this morning over the young, clear, youthful brow—the wind has found out scores of little curls hidden in the braids, and turns them out with a child’s laughter, full of sweet triumph and delight—a face that looks up full and clearly to answer the brave smile upon the sky. Twenty years old, with warm blood flashing in her cheeks, a fearless, innocent courage gleaming from her eyes, and never a cloud over her all her life long, save some such soft, white, rounded shadow as floats yonder in our sight over the undiscouraged heavens—for it is very true that neither headache nor heartache has yet been known to Menie Laurie by any surer knowledge than the hearing of the ear.

Maiden meditation—No: there is little of this in the stir of life that makes an unconscious atmosphere about her, here where she stands in the fearless safety of her natural home. Not that Menie is notably thoughtless either, or poor in the qualities of mind which produce thought—but her mind lies still, like a charmed sea under the sunshine. There has never a ship of hope gone down yet under those dazzling waters, never a storm arisen upon them to chafe the waves against the rocks; nothing but flecks of summer clouds, quiet shadows of summer nights, darkness all lit and glorified with mellow moonbeams—and how her heart would be if some strange ghost of tempest rose upon the sky, her heart neither knows nor fears.

The window is open behind you, Menie; Mrs Laurie fears no draughts, and it is well; but our mother’s patience, like other good things, has a limit, and having called you vainly three times over, she closes behind you this mode of return. No great matter. See what a little sparkling shower this poor brown-coated sparrow has shaken from the thorny branch he has just perched upon; and as your eyes wander in this direction, your ear becomes aware of a certain sound, a quick impatient breath sent hard through the expanded nostrils, which is the well-known token in the house of Burnside of Jenny’s “fuff;” and straightway your eyes brighten, Menie Laurie—one could not have fancied it was possible a minute ago—and smiles half hidden break over all your face, flushing here and there in such a kindly suffusion of playfulness and mirth, that even Jenny herself is not angry when she sees how this fuff of hers makes excellent sport for you.

“What ails our Jenny now?” said Menie, turning the angle of the wall to enter by the kitchen door.

“Lassie, dinna drive folk doited,” answered Jenny. “I’m thrang at my wark—gang in yonder and speak to her yoursel.”

Nelly Panton sits mournfully upon the wooden stool. If you take her own word for it, no one is more contemptuous of “fyking” and “making a wark” than Jenny of Burnside; but the kitchen—woe be to the hapless stranger who ventures to commend it!—is quite resplendent with brightness and good order. The fire, cheerfully burning in the grate, finds a whole array of brilliant surfaces to dance in, and dances to its heart’s content. Glittering metal and earthenware, Jenny’s looking-glass at one side, and the dark polish of Jenny’s oak table with its folding leaf at the other, line all the walls with warmth and light; and the fire, repulsed and defeated only by this one obstinately opaque body before it, besets the dark outline of Nelly Panton with a very tremble of eagerness, seeking in vain for something, if it were but the pin of her shawl, or the lifting of her eye, to repeat its kindly glimmer in. There is no pin visible in Nelly’s doleful shawl, so closely wrapped about her person, and Nelly’s pensive glances seek the floor, and the light falls off from her figure foiled and baffled, finding nothing congenial there. Come you hither, Menie Laurie, that the friendly fireside spirit may be consoled—playing in warm rays upon your hair, which the wind has blown about so pleasantly that the bright threads hang a hundred different ways, and catch a various glow of reflection in every curl—leaping up triumphantly under the raised lids of these sunny eyes—catching a little ring upon your finger, a little golden clasp at your white neck. No wonder Nelly draws her shawl closer, and turns her back upon the light, as she rises to speak to you.

“My mother’s ill and anxious in her mind, Miss Menie; and no to say that its lane, but thrawn and perverse as onybody could conceive. I’m sure ye’ll hear nae character of me in the haill countryside for onything but being as harmless a person as could gang about quiet wark in ony house; but she’s ta’en a turn that she canna bide even me; and aye for ever, night and morning, keeping up a constant wark about her son. I like Johnnie weel enough mysel—but what’s the guid o’ seeking letters as lang as we ken he’s weel?—and that’s what I’m aye saying, but she’ll no hearken to me.”

“Does Johnnie write so seldom?—but I’m sure nothing ails him, or we should have heard,” said Menie. “Tell her she’s to keep up her heart—he’ll do very well yonder. You should make her cheery, Nelly, now when you’re at home the whole day.”

“I do what I can, Miss Menie,” said Nelly, shaking her head mournfully. “I tell her a lad’s just as safe in the toun as in the country, and that it’s a real unbelieving-like thing to be aye groaning even on about Johnnie, and her has mair bairns. But someway she gets nae satisfaction, and I think she would be mair pleased if you could get a line from Mr Randall saying when he saw him, and whether he’s doing well or no, than a’ the reason I could gie her if I was preaching frae this to Martinmas. I came away from my wark anes errant to bid ye. Will you ask Mr Randall about Johnnie, Miss Menie, that I may get some peace wi’ my mother?”

The breath comes quickly over Menie Laurie’s lip—a little flutter of added colour—a momentary falling of the eyelids—a shy, conscious smile hovering about the mouth—and then Menie nods her head assentingly and says, “Yes, Nelly, I will.”

“Yes, Nelly, I will,” repeated Menie, after a little pause of blushing self-communion. “Tell her I’ll come and let her hear as soon as there is any news; and say I think she should be cheery, Nelly, now she has you at home.”

Making a meek inclination of her person, neither a bow nor a curtsy, but something half-way between them, in answer to this speech, Nelly goes away; and almost encountering her on her outward passage over the threshold, enters Jenny fuffing at a furious rate, and casting her head up into the air with wrathful contempt, like some little shaggy Highland pony whose pride has been wounded. For Jenny’s wrath has nothing of the dignity conferred by superior stature or commanding person, and it is hard to restrain a smile at the vigour of her “fuff.”

“Twenty years auld, and nae mair sense than that!—the lassie’s daft! I would like to ken how it’s possible for mortal woman to be cheery with Nelly Panton within half a mile o’ her! If they flit to the Brigend at the next term, as they’re aye threatening, I’ll gie the mistress her leave mysel.”

“I think I’ll run away if you’re aye so crabbed, Jenny,” said her young mistress. “What has everybody done?”

“Everybody’s done just a’ the mischief they could do,” said Jenny, pathetically: “there’s no an article ever happens in this house that mightna be mended if some ither body had the guiding o’t. There’s a’ the gangrels o’ the countryside coming and gaun with their stories—there’s the mistress hersel, that might have mair sense, ta’en a cauld in her head, and a hoast fit to waken a’ the toun, standing at the door hearing Bessy Edgar’s clavers about a no-weel wean—and there’s yoursel the warst of a’. Do you think if onybody had ever askit me, that I would have gien my consent to let a lassie o’ your years plight her troth to a wandering lad away to seek his fortune, like Randall Home? But you’ll never ken the guid friend you’ve lost in Jenny till the puir body’s out o’ the gate, and in her grave; and I wouldna say how soon that might be if there’s nae end o’ on-gauns like thir.”

And with a loud long sigh Jenny sallied out through the paved passage, from which you could catch a gleam of sunshine playing in chequers on the strip of coloured matting and the margin of stones, to deliver just such another lecture to the mistress in the parlour.

While Menie stands alone, her head thrown forward a little, her hair playing lightly on her cheek, in a pause of pleasant fancy—yes, it is true, Menie is betrothed. Calm as her heart lies in her pure girl’s breast, Menie has seen the sky flush out of its natural summer beauty with the warmer passionate hues of this new love; and many a tint of joyous changeful colour plays about the bright horizon of Menie’s fancy, and throws a charm of speculation into the future, which never spectre has risen yet to obscure. It would need a sermon heavier than Jenny’s to throw a single vapour of doubt or distrust upon Menie Laurie’s quiet heart.

CHAPTER II.

Mrs Laurie of Burnside sits alone in her sunny parlour. The fire in the grate, quite discountenanced and overborne by the light which pours in from the west window, keeps up a persevering crackle, intent to catch the ear, and keep itself in notice by that means if by no other. It is the only sound you can hear, except the hum of the eight-day clock in the passage without, and Jenny’s distant step upon the kitchen floor;—Menie is out again on some further explorations about the garden—Mrs Laurie sits and works alone.

You might call this room a drawing-room if you were ambitiously disposed—it is only the parlour in Burnside. Every piece of wood about it is dark with age and careful preservation; rich ancient mahogany glimmering clear in the polish of many a year’s labour—little tables with twisted spiral legs and fantastic ornaments almost as black as ebony—and here in the corner a fine old cabinet of oak, with its carved projections of flower and berry burnished bright, and standing out in clear relief from the dark background. On the table lies some “fancy-work,” which it irks the soul of Mrs Laurie to see her daughter employed on; but what is to be done with Menie’s fingers, when our mother feels the household necessities of sewing scarcely enough to supply herself?

Go lightly over the rich colours of this well-preserved carpet, which is older than yourself most probably, though it wears its age so well, and we can look out and see what lies beyond the Burnside garden before Mrs Laurie is aware. The west window is all fringed and glittering with rain-drops lying lightly on the pale green buds of these honeysuckle boughs, and now and then one of them falls pattering down upon the grass like a sigh. Do not believe in it—it is but a mock of nature—the counterfeit wherewithal a light heart enhances to itself its own calm joy; for in reality and truth there is no such thing as sighing here.

Some thatched houses in a cluster, just where the green-mossed wall of the bridge breaks out of the shelter of these guarding fir-trees—one triumphant slated roof lifting itself a story higher than the gossipry of those good neighbours who lay their brown heads together in a perpetual quiet discussion of what goes on below. The light lies quietly, half caressing, upon the thatch roofs, but gleams off the wet slates, and flashes from the tiles yonder, in a sudden glow. There are some loitering firs about, to thrust their outline on the enclosing sky, and a hazy background of bare trees fluttering and glistering in the light, all conscious of the new-budded leaves, which at this distance we cannot see. Beyond the Brigend your eye loses itself on a line of road travelling away towards the hills, with two great heavy ash-trees holding their gaunt arms over it for a portal and gateway—on a level line of fields, broken hedges, scattered trees, with the blue tints of distance, and here and there the abrupt brown dash of a new-ploughed field to diversify the soft universal green—and on the hills themselves, a bold semi-circular sweep stealing off faintly to the sky on one hand—while at the other, Criffel, bluff and burly, slopes his great shoulder down upon the unseen sea.

Nearer at hand the burn itself looks through the garden’s thorny boundary with glints and sunny glances, interchanging merrily with Menie on the lawn, who pays its smiles with interest. This is almost all we have to look at from the west window of Burnside.

And now, if you turn within to our mother in her easy-chair. It is not quite what you call benign, this broad, full, well-developed brow; and the eyes under it so brown, and liquid, and dewy, one fancies they could flash with impatience now and then, and laugh out the warmest mirth, as well as smile that smile of kindness, which few eyes express so well; and it is best to say at the beginning that our mother is not benign, and that it is no abstract being of a superior class lifted on the height of patience, experience, and years, who sits before us in this cushioned chair, bending her brow a little over the letter in her hand. Sorrow and experience she has had in her day; but still our mother, with warm human hands, and breast as full of hope and energy as it was twenty years ago, takes a full grasp of life.

The linen she has been mending lies on the table beside her, more than half concealing Menie’s lighter occupation; and, with her elbow leant upon it, Mrs Laurie holds a letter with a half-puzzle of amusement, a half-abstraction of thought. Strangely adverse to all her moods and habits is the proposal it makes, yet Mrs Laurie lingers over it, hesitates, almost thinks she will accept. Such a multitude of things are possible to be done when one does them “for Menie’s sake.”

For Menie’s sake—but, in the mean time, it is best that Menie should be called in to share the deliberation; and here she comes accordingly, with such an odour of fresh air about her as makes the parlour fragrant. Menie has a restless way of wandering about on sunny afternoons; there is something in her that will not compose into quietness; and very poor speed, when it is sunshine, comes Menie’s “fancy-work;” so that there is nothing more common than this fragrance of fresh air in the parlour when Menie’s presence is needed there.

“Your father’s aunt has written me a letter. I want your wisest thought about it. Read it, Menie,” said Mrs Laurie, leaning back in her chair, with an air of exhaustion. Menie read—

“My dear Mrs Laurie,—I find I really have forgotten your Christian name; and whether I have quite a right to call you my dear niece, or whether you might not think it an uncalled-for thing in me who have not the privilege of years, or if, one way or another, you would be pleased, I cannot tell, having so little acquaintance with your mental habits or ways of thinking. Indeed I confess I had nearly forgotten, my dear, that John Laurie had a wife and a little girl in Kirklands still, till just a chance recalled it to me: and I really have no means of finding out whether I should condole with you for living so much out of the world, or wish you joy of a pretty little house like Burnside, with its nice neighbourhood and good air. I am sometimes a little dull myself, living alone; and as I have positively made up my mind never to marry, and am so particular in my society that I never have above half-a-dozen friends whom I care to visit, it has occurred to me, since you were recalled to my recollection, that we might do worse than join our incomes together, and live as one household. I have pretty reception-rooms in my house, and a sleeping-room more than I need—a very good apartment; and the advantage of being near London is very great for a little girl, for masters, and all that: besides that, I flatter myself the attention I should make a point of paying her would be of great importance to your child; and out of what we could put together of our joint savings, we might make a very pretty marriage-portion for her when her time comes; for I have no other relations, as I fancy you know, and have very decidedly made up my mind, whatever persecution I may be exposed to on the subject, never to marry. I have one tolerably good servant, who is my own maid, and another very bad one, who has charge of all the household matters: the grief and annoyance this woman is to me are beyond description; and if you should happen to have an attached and faithful person in your house, I advise you to bring her with you;—of course you will require an attendant of your own.

“I shall be glad to have a letter from you soon, letting me know what you will do. You would have a cheerful life with me, I think. I am myself a person of uncommonly lively disposition, though I have known so many of the more refined sorrows of life; and the freshness of youth is a delightful study. I feel I shall grow quite a child in sympathy with your little girl. Pray come—Hampstead is a delightful locality; so near London, too, and within reach of society so very excellent—and I am sure you would find the change greatly for your daughter’s good.

“With much regard and kind feeling to both her and you, I am affectionately yours,

“Annie Laurie.”

“To Hampstead! to London!” Menie says nothing more, but her eyes shine upon her mother’s with a restless glow of appeal. London holds many a wonder to the young curious heart which yet knows nothing of the world, and London holds Randall Home.

“You would like to go, Menie? But how we should like this aunt of yours is a different story,” said Mrs Laurie; “and for my part, I am very well content with Burnside.”

“It is true she calls me a little girl,” said Menie, turning to her own particular grievance; “but I should think she means everything very kindly, for all that.”

“Fantastic old wife!” said Mrs Laurie, with a little impatient derision, not unlike Jenny’s fuff. “She was older than your father, Menie—a woman near sixty, I’ll warrant; and she has made up her mind never to marry—did ever anybody hear the like! But you need not look so disappointed either. Put away the letter—we’ll take a night’s rest on it, and then we’ll decide.”

But Menie read it over once more before she laid it aside, and Menie betrayed her anxiety about the decision in a hundred questions which her mother could not answer. Mrs Laurie had only once been in London, and could tell nothing of Hampstead, the only reminiscence remaining with her being of a verdant stretch of turf, all dinted over with little mounds and hollows rich in green fern and furze, which the benighted natives called a heath. Born within sight of Lochar Moss, Mrs Laurie laughed the pretensions of this metropolitan heath to scorn.

CHAPTER III.

The wind sweeps freshly down from among the hills, a busy knave, drying up the gleaming pools along the road as he hurries forward for a moment’s pause and boisterous gossip with these two ash-trees. Very solemn and abstracted as they stand, these elders of the wood, looking as if session or synod were the least convention they could stoop to, it is wonderful how tolerant they are of every breath of gossip, and with what ready interest they rustle over all their twigs to see a new unwonted stranger face pass under them. Menie Laurie, pausing to look up through the hoar branches to the full blue sky, is too well known and familiar to receive more than the friendly wave of recognition accorded to every cottar neighbour nigh.

And clear and fresh as your own life, Menie, is the blue bright sky which stoops above you. White clouds all streaked and broken fly over it at a headlong pace, now and then throwing from their hasty hands a sprinkling of rain that flashes in the sunshine. April is on the fields, moving in that quiet stir with which you can hear the young green corn-blades rustle, as they strike through the softened soil. April sits throned upon the hills, weeping as she smiles in the blue distance, and trying on her veil of misty sunshine, after a hundred fantastic fashions, like a spoiled child; and April, Menie Laurie—April, restless, fearless, springing forward on the future, gladdening all this bright to-day with a breath of rippling sweet commotion, which dimples all the surface over, but never disturbs the deeper waters at their fountain-head—is in your youthful heart.

Hurrying to many a bright conclusion are the speculations that possess it now—not extremely reasonable, or owning any curb of logic—not even very consequent, full of joyous irrelevancies—digressions at which yourself would laugh aloud if this running stream of fancy were but audible and expressed—notwithstanding, full of interest, full of pleasure, and keeping time with their rapid pace to the flying progress of the clouds.

And the road glides away merrily under these straying footsteps; now hastening, now loitering, as the momentary mood suggests. Old hawthorns, doddered and crabbed, stand here and there forlorn upon the edges of the way; and where the hedge is younger and less broken, there are warm banks of turf, and clear bits of gleaming water, which it would be an insult to call ditches, looking up through tangled grass, and a wilderness of delicate stem and leaf, half weeds, half flowers. But now we have a stile to cross, mounting up from the high-road; and now it is a sunny hillside path, narrow and hemmed in between a low stone-wall, from which all manner of mosses and tufts of waving herbage have taken away the rudeness, and a field of young green corn: innocent enough just now are these soft plants low upon the fragrant soil in the blade; but you shall see how the bearded spikes will push you to the wall, and the red poppies mock you, lying safe under shelter of the tall corn-forest, if you try to pass in September where you can pass so easily in Spring.

A soft incline, at first sloping smoothly under the full sunshine—by-and-by more rugged and broken, with something that looks half like the ancient channel of a hill-spring, breaking all the soft pasture-grass into a rough projecting outline, like a miniature coast—and now a low hedge rough with thorns and brambles, instead of the dyke; for, after all, this is no gentle southland hill, but one of the warders of the Scottish Border, waving his plumed cap proudly in the fresh spring air, as he looks over the low-lying debatable moors on the other side, and defies the fells of Cumberland. If this were June, as it is April, you would see foliage clustering richly about the bold brow which he lifts to the clouds; just now the branches hang down, like long light brown ringlets, half unravelled with the spring rain and morning dew, and droop upon his falling shoulders as low as this green nest here, so sheltered and solitary, which he holds in his expanded arms.

It is no easy task to come at the state entrance and principal gate of the farmhouse of Crofthill. But now that you have caught sight of its white walls and slated roof, hold on stoutly—fear no gap in the hedge, no rude stone-stair projecting out of the grey limestone dyke—and two or three leaps and stumbles will bring you to the mossy paling, and to some possible entrance-door. If there is no one about—a very improbable circumstance, seeing that some curious eye at a window must have ere now found out a passenger on the ascent, or some quick ear heard the dry hedgerow branches crash under the coming foot—it is impossible to describe the strange feeling of isolation which falls upon you, here at the door of as friendly a little home as is on all the Border. At your right hand those warder hills, in many a diverse tint of long-worn livery, hold the vigilant line as far as Criffel, whose post is on the sea; on the other side they disappear like a file of grey-headed marshal-men, into the cloudy distance; underneath, remote, and still, breaking softly into the fresh daylight, mapped out with gleaming burns and long lines of winding road, lies the level country we have left; and Burnside yonder, with its thin silvery glimmer of attendant water, its dark background of trees, and the Brigend hamlet of which it is patrician and superior, lies quiet and silent under the full sun.

The farmhouse of Crofthill is but two storeys high, and, with a strange triangular slope of garden before it, fronts sideways, indifferent to the landscape, though there is one glorious gable-window which makes amends. Menie Laurie, bound for the Crofthill farmhouse, knows the view so well that she does not pause for even a momentary glance, but, lightly stepping over the last stile, is ready to meet this welcoming figure which already calls to her, running down the garden to the little mossy wicket in the paling of the lower end.

“July! July! you might have come to meet me,” said Menie. The air is so quiet that her soft girl’s voice rings over all the hill.

July—but you must not look for anything like the gorgeous summer month, in this little timid slight figure running down the sloping way with her light brown hair so soft and silky that it is almost impossible to retain it either in braid or curl, floating on the air behind her, and her gentle pale face faintly glowing with a little flush of pleasure. If there had been anything symbolic in the name, they had better have called her February, this poor little July Home; but there is nothing symbolic in the name—only John Home of Crofthill, many a long year ago, had the hap to find somewhere, and bring triumphantly to his house on the hill, a pretty little sentimental wife, with some real refinement in her soft nature, and a good deal of the fantastic girl-romance, which passes muster for it among the unlearned. Mrs Home, who called her son Randall, called her little daughter Julia—Mrs Home’s husband, who knew of nothing better than Johns or Janets, being quiescent, and kindly submissive. But by-and-by, gentle Mrs Home drooped like the pale little flower she was, and fell with the cold spring showers into her grave. Then came big Miss Janet Home from Mid-Lothian, where she had spent her younger days, to be mistress of her brother’s southland farm; and Miss Janet’s one name for the flush of summer, and for her brother’s little motherless petted girl, was Juley; so July came to be the child’s acknowledged name.

But July springs half into Menie Laurie’s arms, and they go up through the garden together, to where Miss Janet stands waiting on the threshold. In simple stature, Miss Janet would make two of her little niece; and though there is no other superfluous bulk about her, her strong and massive framework would not misbecome a man; though a verier woman’s heart never beat within the daintiest boddice, than this one which sometimes “thuds” rather tumultuously, under the large printed dark cotton gown of Miss Janet Home.

“Eh, bairn, I’m glad to see you,” said Miss Janet, holding in her own large brown hand the soft fingers of Menie. “Come in-by, and get yoursel rested. You see there’s a letter frae Randy this morning—”

With many a fit of indignation had Menie resented this Randy, which contracted so unceremoniously her hero’s name; but the penitent Miss Janet perpetually forgot, and immediately attributed the little cloud on her favourite’s brow to some jealousy of this same letter of Randy’s—and pique that it should come to Randy’s humble home instead of to his lady-love.

“I’m aye sae uplifted about a letter,” continued Miss Janet, as she led her visitor in, “though you that gets them every day mayna think—Eh, Miss Menie, my dear! I mind noo it’s a’ me; but you needna gloom at what was just a forget. I’ll never ca’ him Randy again; but, you see, I mind him so weel in his wee coatie—a bit smout o’ a bairn.”

This did not exactly mend matters; but Menie had taken off her bonnet by this time, and found her usual seat in the dim farm-parlour, with its small windows and low-roofed green-stained walls. It was one of the articles of Miss Janet’s creed, that blinds looked well from without; so, although there could never a mortal look in through the thick panes to spy the household economics of Crofthill, only one narrow strip of the unveiled casement appeared between the little muslin curtain and the blind. The gable window, commanding as it did half the level country of Dumfriesshire, was less protected; but the front one cast a positive shadow upon the dark thrifty coloured carpet, the hair-cloth chairs, the mahogany table with its sombre cover, and gave to the room such an atmosphere of shrouded shadowed quiet, that the little bouquet of daffodils and wallflowers on the side-table hung their heads with languid melancholy, and an unaccustomed spectator scarcely ventured with more than a whisper to break the calm.

But Menie Laurie was not unaccustomed, and knew very well where was the brightest corner, nor had much hesitation in drawing up the blind. But Menie had grown very busy with the “fancy” work she had brought with her, when Miss Janet approached with Randall’s letter in her hand. Scandal said that Menie Laurie’s pretty fingers were never so industrious at home as they found it agreeable to be abroad, and Menie was coy and occupied, and put Randall’s letter aside.

“My dear, if you’re busy I’ll read it to you, mysel,” said Miss Janet, who had no appreciation of coyness, “and you can tell your faither, July, that Miss Menie’s come, and that the tea’s just ready; and ye can gie a look ben to the kitchen as you’re passing, and see that Tibbie’s no forgetting the time; and now gang about quiet, like a good bairn, and dinna disturb me. I’m gaun to read the letter.”

And Miss Janet smoothed down her apron, to lay this prized epistle safely on her knee, and wiped her glasses with affectionate eagerness. “My dear, I’m no a grand reader of Randall’s write mysel,” said Miss Janet, clearing her voice, “and he’s getting an awfu’ crabbed hand, as you ken; but I’ve good-will, and you’ll just put up with me.”

It would have been hard for any one gifted with a heart to fail of putting up with Miss Janet as she conned her nephew’s letter. True, she had to pause now and then for a word—true, that she did not much assist Randall’s punctuation; but it was worth even a better letter than Randall’s to see the absorbed face, the affectionate care upon her brow, the anxiety that pondered over all these crabbed corners, and would not lose a word. Menie Laurie had soul enough not to be impatient—even to look up at the abstracted Miss Janet with a little dew in her eye, though her process of reading was very slow.

But now came Tibbie, the household servant of Crofthill, with the tea; and now a little stir in the passage intimated that the maister, fresh from his hillside fields, was hanging up his broad-brimmed hat in the passage. Miss Janet seated herself at the tray—Menie drew her chair away from the window, and a little nearer to the table, and, heralded by July, who came in again like a quiet shadow, her little pale face appearing in the midst of a stream of soft hair once more blown out of its fastenings by the wind—John Home of Crofthill made his appearance, stooping under his low parlour-door.

And perhaps it was these low portals which gave to the lofty figure of the hillside farmer its habitual stoop; but John Home might have been a moss-trooping chieftain for his strength—a baron of romance, for the unconscious dignity and even grace of his bearing. He was older than you would have expected July’s father to be, and had a magnificent mass of white hair, towering into a natural crest of curls over his forehead. The eyes were blue, something cold by natural colour, but warm and kindly in their shining—the face full of shrewd intelligence, humour, and good judgment. He had been nothing all his life but the farmer of Crofthill—and Crofthill was anything but a considerable farm; nevertheless John Home stood in the countryside distinct as his own hill—and not unlike. A genius son does not fall to the lot of every southland farmer, and Randall’s aspirations had elevated, unawares, the whole tone of the family. Randall’s engagement, too, and the magic which made Mrs Laurie of Burnside’s young lady-daughter, and not any farmhouse beauty near, so kindly and intimate a visitor in Crofthill, was not without its additional influence; but the house lost nothing of its perfectly unpretending simplicity in the higher aims to which it unconsciously opened its breast.

“And what is this I hear, of going to London?” said John Home, as he took his seat at table. Self-respect hinders familiarity—the good farmer did not like to call his daughter-in-law elect by her own simple Christian name; so half in joke, and half to cover the shy, constitutional hesitation, of which even age had not recovered him, Menie bore in Crofthill, in contrast with the other name of July habitual there, the pretty nickname of May—“Is it true that Burnside is to flit bodily, as July says? I ken ane that will like the change; but I must say that I ken some mair that will not be quite so thankful.”

“Ye may say that, John,” said Miss Janet, with a sigh. “I’m sure, for his ain part, Miss Menie, he’ll no think the place is like itsel, and you away; for if ever I saw a man”——

“Whisht,” said Crofthill hurriedly. The good man did not like his partiality spoken of in presence of its object. “But I would like to hear when this terrible flitting is to be.”

“My mother has not made up her mind yet,” said Menie. “It was yesterday the letter came, and I left her still as undecided as ever—for she is only half inclined to go, Mr Home; and as for Jenny”——

“It will be worth while to hear what Jenny says of London,” said John Home with a smile; “but the countryside will gather a cloud when we think May’s gone from Burnside. Well, July, speak out, woman; what is’t you’re whispering now?”

“I was saying that Randall would be glad,” said July softly. July had a fashion of whispering her share of the conversation to her next neighbour, to be repeated for the general benefit.

“Eh, puir laddie!” exclaimed Miss Janet, with glistening eye. “I could find it in my heart to be glad too, Miss Menie, though we are to lose you, for his sake. I think I see the glint in his eye when he hears the good news.”

And Miss Janet’s own eyes shone with loving, unselfish sympathy, as she repeated, “Randy, puir callant! and no a creature heeding about him, mair than he was a common young man, in a’ yon muckle toun!”

“We’ll let Randall say his pleasure himsel,” said his father, who was more delicately careful of embarrassing Menie than either sister or daughter—perhaps more, indeed, than the occasion required. “For my part, I’m no glad, and never would pretend to be; and if Mrs Laurie makes up her mind to stay”——

“What then?” said Menie, looking up quickly, with a flush of displeasure.

“I’ll say she’s a very sensible woman,” said the farmer. “Ay, May, my lassie, truly will I, for a’ that bonnie gloom of yours—or whatever my son Randall may have to say.”

CHAPTER IV.

“I’ve been hearing something from Miss Menie, mem,” said Jenny, entering the parlour of Burnside with a determined air, and planting herself firmly behind the door. Jenny was very short, very much of one thickness from the shoulders to the edge of the full round skirts under which pattered her hasty feet—and had a slight deformity, variously estimated by herself and her rustic equals according to the humour of the moment—being no more than “a high shouther” in Jenny’s sunshiny weather, but reaching the length of a desperate “thraw” when Jenny’s temper had come to be as “thrawn” as her frame. A full circle, bunchy, substantial, and comfortable, were Jenny’s woollen skirts, striped in cheerful colours; and you had no warrant for supposing that any slovenly superfluous bulk increased the natural dimensions of the round, considerable waist, or stiff, well-tightened boddice, of which Jenny’s clean short gown and firmly tied apron-strings defined the shape so well. Very scanty was Jenny’s hair, and very little of it appeared under her white muslin cap; and Jenny’s complexion was nothing to boast of, though some withered bloom remained upon her cheeks. Her lips closed upon each other firmly; her brow was marked with sundry horizontal lines, which it was by no means difficult to deepen into a frown; and Jenny’s eyes, grey, keen, and active, were at this present moment set in fierce steadiness and gravity; while the little snort of her “fuff,” and the little nod of her cap, with its full, well-ironed borders, gave timely intimation of the mood in which Jenny came.

“Yes, Jenny,” said Mrs Laurie, laying down her work on her knee, and sitting back into her chair. Mrs Laurie knew the signs and premonitions well, and lost no time in setting her back against the rock, and taking up her weapons of defence.

“I say I’ve been hearing something from Miss Menie, mem,” repeated Jenny still more emphatically; “things are come a gey length, to my puir thought, when it’s the youngest of the house that brings word of a great change to me!—and I’m thinking the best thing we can do is to part friends as lang as we can keep up decent appearances; so maybe ye’ll take the trouble, mem, if it’s no owre muckle freedom of me asking you, to look out for a new lass afore the term.”

“Indeed, Jenny, I’ll do no such thing,” said Mrs Laurie quietly. Jenny heeded not, but went on with a little nervous motion of her head, half shake, half nod, and many a snort and half-drawn breath interposed between.

“There’s been waur folk than Jenny serving in this house, I reckon. I’ve kent women mysel that did less wark with mair slaistry—and aye as muckle concerned for the credit of the house; but I’m no gaun to sound my ain praise; and I would like to ken whether I’m to be held to the six months’ warning, or if I may put up my kist and make my flitting like other folk at the term?”

“You can make your flitting, Jenny, when we make ours; that is soon enough, surely,” said Mrs Laurie with a half smile. Jenny had not roused her mistress yet to anything but defence, so with a louder fuff than ever she rushed to the attack again.

“For a smooth-spoken lass—believe hersel, she wouldna raise the stour without pardon craved—I would recommend Nelly Panton. There’s no muckle love lost atween her and me—but she’ll say ony ill of Jenny—and aye have a curtsy ready for a lady’s ca’, and her een on the grund, and neither mind nor heart o’ her ain, if the mistress says no. Na, I wouldna say but Nelly Panton’s the very ane to answer, for she’ll never take twa thoughts about casting off father and mother, kin and country, whenever ye like to bid—though ye’ll mind, mem, it’s for sake of the wage, and no for sake of you.”

“Dear me, Jenny,” said Mrs Laurie impatiently, “when did I ask for such a sacrifice? What makes ye such a crabbed body, woman? Did I ever bid a servant of mine give up father or mother for me? You have been about Burnside ten years now, Jenny—when did you know me do anything like that?”

“A lady mayna mean ony ill—I’m no saying’t,” said Jenny; “but ane may make a bonnie lock of mischief without kenning. I’ve been ten years about Burnside—ay, and mair siller!—and to think the mistress should be laying her odds and ends thegither—a woman at her time of life—to flit away to a strange country, and never letting on a word to Jenny, till the puir body’s either forced into a ship upon the sea, or thrown on the cauld world to find her drap parritch at ony doorstep where there’s charity! Eh, sirs, what’s the favour of this world to trust to! But I’m no gaun to break my heart about it, for Jenny has twa guid hands o’ her ain—nae thanks to some folk—to make her bread by yet!”

“Jenny’s an unreasonable body,” said her mistress, with half-amused annoyance: “and if you were not spoken to before, it was just because my mind was unsettled, and it’s only since yesterday I have thought of it at all. If I make up my mind to go, it’s for anything but pleasure to myself—so you have no occasion to upbraid me, Jenny, for doing this at my time of life.”

“Me!” exclaimed Jenny, lifting her hands in appeal, “me upbraid the mistress! Eh, sirs, the like of that! But, mem, will you tell me, if it’s no for your ain pleasure, you that’s an independent lady, what for would you leave Burnside?”

Mrs Laurie hesitated; but Mrs Laurie knew very well that nothing could be more unprofitable than any resentment of Jenny’s fuff—and her own transitory displeasure had already died away.

“You may say we’re independent at this present time,” she said with a little sigh; “but did it never occur to you, Jenny—if anything happened to me—my poor lassie!—what’s to become of Menie then?”

“Havers!” cried Jenny loudly. “I mean—I ask your pardon—but what’s gaun to happen to you this twenty years and mair?”

“Twenty years is a lifetime of itself,” said her mistress; “it might not be twenty days nor twenty hours. The like of us have no right to reckon our time.”

“It’s time for me to buckle my shoon to my feet, and my cloak to my shouthers, if you’re thinking upon your call,” said Jenny. “But, no to be ill-mannered, putting my forbears in ae word with yours, we’re baith come of a lang-lived race—and you’re just in your prime, as weel as ever ye was; and ’deed, I canna think it onything but a reflection upon myself, that maybe might get to the kirk mair constant if I was to try, when I hear ye speaking like that to puir auld wizened Jenny, that’s six and fifty guid, no to speak of the thraw she’s had a’ her days.”

And a single hot tear of petulant distress fell upon Jenny’s arm.

“Well, Jenny,” said Mrs Laurie, “one thing we’ll agree in, I know—you could not wish so ill a wish to Menie, poor thing, as that she might leave this world before her mother. You would think it in the course of nature that Menie should see both you and me in our graves. Now, if I was taken away next week, or next year,—what is my poor bairn to do?”

And Jenny vainly fuffed to conceal the little fit of sobbing which this idea brought upon her. “Do! She’ll be married upon her ain gudeman lang years afore that time comes; and Randall Home’s a decent lad, though I’ll no say he would have just taken my fancy, if onybody had askit me; and she’ll hae a hunder pound or twa to keep her pocket, of what you’re aye saving for her; and I have twa-three bawbees laid up in the bank mysel.”

“Ay, Jenny, so have I,” said her mistress; “but two or three hundred pounds is a poor provision for a young friendless thing like Menie; and I have nothing but a liferent in Burnside; and my annuity, you know, ends with me. No doubt there’s Randall Home to take into consideration; but the two of them are very young, Jenny, and many a thing may come in the way. I would like Menie to have something else to depend on than Randall Home.”

“Bless me, mem, you’ve a mote in your een the day,” said Jenny impatiently. “What’s the puir callant done now? They tell me he’s as weel-doing a lad as can be, and what would onybody have mair?”

“Hush, Jenny,” said Mrs Laurie, “and hear me to an end. This lady has a better income than I have, and she says we may lay our savings together for Menie—a very good offer; and Menie can get better education, whatever may happen to her; and we can see with our own eyes how Randall Home is coming on in the world; for you see, Jenny, I have a kind of right to be selfish on Menie’s account. I’ve tried poverty myself in my day; and Menie is my only bairn.”

The tears came into the mother’s eyes. Menie had not always been her only bairn; and visions of a bold brother, two years older than her little girl, and natural protector and champion of Menie, flashed up before her in the bright air of this home room, where ten years ago her first-born paled and sickened to his early death.

“I wouldna gang—no a fit,” exclaimed Jenny, breaking into a little passion of anger and tears. “Wha’s trusting in Providence now—wha’s leaving the ane out of the question that has a’ in His hands—and making plans like as if He didna remain when we were a’ away? I didna think there had been sae little mense—I couldna have believed there was sae little grace in a house like this—and I wouldna gang a fit—no me—as if I thought Providence was owre puir an inheritance for the bairn!”

And Jenny hurried away to her kitchen, to expend both tears and anger; but Jenny’s opposition to the London “flitting,” in spite of her indignant protest, died from that hour.

CHAPTER V.

The sun is dipping low into the burning sea far away, which Criffel’s envious shoulder hides from us; and the last sheaf of rays, like a handful of golden arrows, strikes down into the plain, grazing this same strong shoulder with ineffectual fire as they pass. Touches as of rosy fingers are on all the clouds, and here and there one hangs upon the sky in an ecstacy, suspended not upon the common air, but on some special atmosphere of light. The long attendant shadows have faded from the trees, the roadside pools have lost their brilliant glimmer, and a wakeful whispering hush about the hedgerows and old hawthorns stir all those curious budded watchers, to hear the slow lounging steps of rustic labourers on the road, and wait for the delicate gleam out of the east which shall herald the new-risen moon.

And light are your home-going steps, May Marion, upon this quiet road, which breathes out fresh evening odours from all its dewy neighbour fields—not slow, but lingering—arrested by a hundred fanciful delays. Before you is no great range of prospect—the two ash-trees, holding up their united arms, very much as the children of the Brigend, playing under them, hold up their small clasped hands arched over the merry troop who are rushing yonder “through the needle ee”—the hamlet’s meditative houses, standing about the road here and there, in the pleasant vacancy of the slow-falling gloaming—the burn rumbling drowsily under the bridge—the kye coming home along the further way—and farthest off of all, the grave plantation firs, making a dark background for your own pleasant home. The purple shadows are fading into palmer grey upon the hills behind, and the hills themselves you could almost fancy contract their circle, and grasp each other’s hands in closer rank, with a manful tenderness for this still country, child-like and unfearing, which by-and-by will fall asleep at their feet. Your heart scarcely sings in the hush, though you carry it so lightly; its day’s song is over, Menie Laurie—and the quiet heart comes down with a little flutter of sweet thought into the calm of its kindly nest.

The light is fading when Menie reaches the Brigend; and by the door of one of the cottages, Nelly Panton, in her close bonnet and humble enveloping shawl, stands beside the stone seat on which an older woman, who holds her head away with pertinacity, has seated herself to rest.

“She’ll no take heart, whatever I can do,” says the slow steady voice of Nelly, from which the elastic evening air seems to droop away, throwing it down heavily upon the darkening earth. “I’m sure I couldna say mair, auntie, nor do mair to please her than I aye try, in my quiet way; but morning and night she mourns after Johnnie, making nae mair account of me than if I was a stranger in the house. And what should ail Johnnie?—for I’m sure I dinna ken what would come o’ folk in our condition if we were aye write-writing from ae hand to anither, like them that have naething else to do. If onything was wrang, we would hear fast enough. I’m saying, mother!”

“If you would but let me be!” groaned the older woman; “I’m no complaining to you. If I am anxious in my mind, I’m no wanting to publish’t afore a’ the parish. I’m meaning nae offence to you, Marget—but I think this lassie’s tongue will drive me out of my wits.”

“That’s just her way,” said Nelly, with mournful complacency. “Instead of taking it kind when I try to ease her, ye would think I was doing somebody an injury; and I’m sure it’s a fashious temper indeed that canna put up with me—for I’ve aye been counted as quiet a lass as there is in the haill countryside, and never did ill to onyhody a’ my days. From morning to night I’m aye doing my endeavour to get comfort to her—hearing of the lads that have done weel in London, and aye standing up for Johnnie that he’s no sae ill as he’s ca’ed, though he mayna write as often as some do; and just yesterday I gaed myself to Burnside, a guid mile o’ gate from our house, to ask Miss Menie Laurie to write to Randall Home for word about Johnnie,—and I’m sure what ony mortal could do mair, I canna tell.”

“What business has Miss Menie Laurie, or Randall Home either, with my trouble?” exclaimed the mother indignantly. “Am I no to daur shed a tear in my ain house, but a’ the toun’s to hear o’t? Yes, Miss Menie, I see it’s you, but I canna help it. I’m no meaning disrespect either to you or ony of your friends; but naebody could thole to have their private thoughts turned out for a’ the world to see—and she’ll put me daft if she gets encouragement to gang on at this rate.”

“Must I not ask about Johnnie, Mrs. Lithgow?” said Menie; “Nelly said it would comfort you.”

“Nelly’s aye saying something to aggravate a puir woman out of baith life and patience,” said Nelly’s mother; “and he’s just her half-brother, you see, and she hasna the interest in him she might have. I’m sure I canna tell how she came to be a daughter of mine,” continued the poor woman, rising and turning away to address herself, rapidly and low, to Menie’s particular ear. “I would do mony a thing afore I would have my ain troubled thoughts, or so muckle as a breath on Johnnie’s credit, kent in the countryside; and I’m no sae anxious—no near sae anxious as that cuttie says; but, Miss Menie, you’re an innocent lassie—I’ll trust you. I have a tremble in my heart for my young son, away yonder his lane. No that Johnnie has ony ill ways—far from that, far from that—and a better son to his mother never was the world owre; but an innocent thing like you disna ken how a puir laddie’s tempted—and there’s no a creature near hand to mind him of his duty, and naething but a wheen careless English, that disna ken our kirk nor our ways, at every side of him—and I charged him he was to gang to nae kirk but our ain. I’m sure I dinna ken—whiles things that folk mean for guid counsel turn out snares—and I’m sair bewildered in my mind. If you’ll just write, Miss Menie—just like as it was out of your ain head, and bid the young gentleman—I hear he’s turned a grand scholar, and awfu’ clever—take the pains to ask how Johnnie’s winning on—but no to say you have heard ony ill of him. I wouldna have him think his mother was doubtful of him, no for a’ Kirklands parish—and he’s aye in the office of that muckle paper that a’body’s heard about—at least as far as I ken. Eh, Miss Menie, it’s a sair thing to have so mony weary miles of land and water, and sae muckle uncertainty, between ane’s ain heart and them that ane likes best.”

With gravity and concern Menie received this confidence, and gave her promise; but Menie did not know how “sair” and terrible this uncertainty was—could not comprehend the wavering paleness of terror, the sickly gleams of anxiety which shot over the poor mother’s face—and a wistful murmur of inquiry, a pity which was almost awe, were all the echoes this voice of real human suffering awoke in Menie’s quiet heart.

And when she had soothed, and comforted, and promised, this gentle heart went on its way—its flutter of sweet thoughts subdued, but only into a fresh reposing calm, like the stillness all bedewed and starry which gathered on the dim home-country round. Wisdom of the world—Experience chill and sober—Knowledge of human kind—grim sisterhood, avoid your twilight way—and by yourself all fearless and undaunted, hoping all things, believing all things, thinking no evil, you are brave enough to go forth, Menie Laurie, upon the world without a tremble; by-and-by will come the time to go forth—and Heaver send the lion to guard this quiet heart upon its way.

In her own chamber, when the night had fully fallen, Menie wrote her letter. Many a mile of land and water, many a new-developed thought on one side, lay between Menie Laurie and Randall Home; but uncertainty had never sickened the blithe child’s hope within her; an ample country, full of mountain-peaks and rocks of danger—burning with hidden breaks of desert, with wells of Marah treacherous and insecure, was the soul which fate had linked so early to Menie Laurie’s soul. She knew the sunny plains that were in it—the mounts of vision, the glens of dreamy sweet romance; but all besides, and all that lay deepest in her own unexplored mind, remained to be discovered. But what she did not know she could not fear.

CHAPTER VI.

“Jenny, Jenny, canna ye open the door—it’s just me.”

“It’s just you, mischief and mischief-maker as ye are,” muttered Jenny, in answer to Nelly Panton’s soft appeal; “and what are you wanting here?”

But Jenny could not be so inhospitable as to shut out with a closed door the applicant for admission, especially as a rapid April shower was just then flashing out of the morning skies. Nelly came in breathless, shaking some bright raindrops off her dingy shawl; but neither the rain upon her cheeks, nor the fresh wind that carried it, nor even the haste of her own errand, sufficed to bring any animating colour to Nelly Panton’s face.

“I’m no to stay a minute,” she said breathlessly. “No a creature kens I’m here; and you’re no to bid me stay, but just gie me your advice and let me rin—I maun be hame before my mother kens.”

“I have nae will to keep ye; ye needna be feared,” retorted Jenny. “And what’s your pleasure now, that you’ve got so early out to Burnside?”

“Nane of the ladies ’ll be stirring yet,” said Nelly, looking round cautiously. “It was just a thing I wanted to ask you, Jenny—I ken you’re aye a guid friend.”

“Sorrow!” muttered Jenny between her teeth—but the end of the sentence died away; and whether the word was used as an epithet, or whether it was “Sorrow take you!” Jenny’s favourite ban, Nelly, innocently confiding, did not pause to inquire.

“For I heard in the Brigend that you had been kent to say that you wouldna gang a’ the gate to London if the mistress ga’e you triple your wage,” said Nelly, “and that you would recommend her to a younger lass. My auntie, Marget Panton, even gaed the length to say that ye had been heard to mention my name; but I wouldna have the face to believe that, though mony thanks to ye for the thought; and I just ran out whenever I rose this morning, to say, do ye think I might put in an application, Jenny, aye counting on you as a guid friend?”

“Wha ever gave ye warrant to believe that I was a guid friend?” exclaimed Jenny. “My patience! you taking upon you to offer yoursel for my place. My place! And wha daured to say I wanted to leave the mistress? Do ye think wage, or triple wage, counts wi’ me? Do ye think I’m just like yoursel, you pitiful self-seeking creature? Do ye think ony mortal would ever be the better of you in ony strait, frae a sair finger to a family misfortune? Gae way wi’ ye! My place, my certy! Would naething serve ye but that?”

“Ye see I’m no taking weel wi’ hame,” said the undismayed Nelly. “My mother and me canna put up right, and me being sae lang away before, she’s got out of the use of my attentions, and canna understand them. But I’m real attentive for a’ that, Jenny, and handy in mony a thing that wouldna be expected frae the like o’ you; and I could wait on Miss Menie, ye ken, being mair like her ain years, and fleech up the mistress grand. I ken I could—besides greeing wi’ the stranger servants, which it’s no to be expected you would do, being aye used to your ain way. But for my part, I’m real quiet and inoffensive—folk never ken me in a house; and I have my ain reasons for wanting to gang to London, baith to look after Johnnie, and ither concerns o’ my ain—and I would aye stand your friend constant, and be thankful to you for recommending me—and I’m sure afore the year was done the mistress would be thankful too for a guid lass—and I could recommend you to a real fine wee cottage atween Kirklands and the Brigend, with a very cheery window looking to the road, that would do grand for a single woman; or my mother would be blithe to take you in for a lodger, and she’s guid company when she’s no thrawn—and Jenny, woman——”

“Gang out of this house,” said Jenny, with quiet fury, holding the door wide open in her hand, and setting down her right foot upon the floor of her own domain, with a stamp of absolute supremacy. “No anither word—gang out of this door, and let me see your face again if ye daur! Gang to London—fleech up the mistress—wait upon Miss Menie! My patience!—and you’ll ca’ a decent woman thrawn to me! Gang out o’ this house, ye shadow!—the sight o’ you’s enough to thraw ony mortal temper. Your mother, honest woman!—but I canna forgive her for being art or part in bringing the like of you to this world. Are ye gaun away peaceably—or I’ll put ye out by the shouthers wi’ my ain twa hands!”

“Eh, sic a temper!” said Nelly Panton, vanishing from the threshold as Jenny made one rapid step forward. “I’m sure I forgive you, Jenny, though I’m sure as weel, that if the rain hadna laid a’ the stour, mony a ane has shaken the dust off their feet for a testimony against less ill usage than you’ve gien me; but I’m thankful for my guid disposition—I’m thankful that there’s nae crook in me, and I leave you to your ain thoughts, Jenny Durward; it’s weel kent what a life thae twa puir ladies lead wi’ ye, through a’ the countryside.”

The kitchen door violently shut, by good fortune drowned for Jenny this last vindictive utterance, and Nelly Panton, unexcited, drew her shawl again close over her elbows, and went with her stealthy steps upon her way—a veritable shadow falling dark across the sunshine, and without a spot of brightness in her, within or without, to throw back reflection, or answer to the sunny morning light which flashed upon all the glistening way.

But no such quietness possessed the soul of Jenny of Burnside; over the fresh sanded floor of her bright kitchen her short vigorous steps pattered like hail. Cups and saucers came ringing down from her hands upon the tray, which she was crowding with breakfast “things.” The bread-basket quivered upon the table where her excited hand had set it down. She turned to the hearth, and the poor little copper kettle rang upon the grate—the poker assaulted the startled fire—the very chain quaked and trembled, hanging from the old-fashioned crook far back in the abyss of the chimney. Very conspicuous in this state of the mental atmosphere became Jenny’s high shoulder. It seemed to develop and increase with every additional fuff, and the most liberal and kindly commentator could not have denied this morning the existence of the “thraw.”

And not without audible expression, over and above the hard-drawn breath of the “fuff,” was Jenny’s indignation. “My place, my certy! less wouldna serve her!”—“Handier than could be expected frae the like o’ me!”—“Stand my friend constant!”—“A cot-house atween Kirklands and the Brigend!” A snort of rage punctuated and separated every successive quotation, till, as Jenny cooled down a little, there came to her relief a variety of extremely complimentary titles, all very eloquent and expressive, conveying in the clearest language Jenny’s opinion of the good qualities of Nelly Panton, which last, by-and-by, however, softened still further into the milder chorus of “a bonnie ane!” with which Jenny’s wrath gradually wore itself away.

All this time the sunshine lay silent and unbroken upon the paved passage, with its strip of matting, and the light shone quiet in Mrs Laurie’s parlour. The petulant rain had ceased to ring upon the panes, though some large drops hung there still, clinging to the framework of the window, and gradually shrinking and drying up before the light. The branches without made a sheen through the air, almost as dazzling as if every tree were a Highland dancer with a drawn claymore in his right hand; and the larch flung its spray of rain upon Menie Laurie’s chamber window, bidding her down to the new life and the new day which brightened all the watching hills.

And now comes Mrs Laurie steadily down the stairs with her little shawl in her hand, and traces of a mind made up and determined in her face; and now comes Menie, with a half song on her lips, and a little light of amusement and expectation in her eyes, for Menie has heard afar off the sound of Jenny’s excitement. But Jenny, too decorous to invade the dignity of the breakfast-table, says nothing when she brings in the kettle, and does not even add to its fuff the sound of her own, and Menie has time to grow composed and grave, and to hear with a more serious emotion Mrs Laurie’s decision. Not without a sigh Mrs Laurie intimates it, though her daughter knows nothing of the one reason which has overweighed all others. But the ruling mind of the household, having decided, loses no time in secondary hesitations. “We will try to let Burnside as it is, Menie,” said Mrs Laurie, looking round upon the familiar room. “If we can get a careful tenant, it will be far better not to remove the furniture. If we make it known at once, the house may be taken before the term; and I will write to your aunt and say that we accept her offer. It is a long journey by land, and expensive. I think we will go to Edinburgh first, Menie. The weather is settled, and should be fine at Whitsunday; and then to London by sea.”

Menie did not trust herself to express in words the excitement of hope and pleasure with which she heard this great and momentous change brought down into a matter of sober everyday arrangement; but it was not difficult to understand and translate the varying colour on her cheek, and the sudden gleam of her sunny eyes. As it happened, however, with a natural caprice, the one objection which her mother’s will could not set aside suddenly suggested itself to Menie. She looked up with a slight alarm—“But Jenny, mother?” Menie Laurie could not realise the possibility of leaving Jenny behind.

Mrs Laurie’s hand had not left the bell. Jenny, at the door, caught the words with satisfaction. But Jenny did not choose to acknowledge herself subject to any influence exercised by the “youngest of the house;” and Jenny, moreover, had come prepared, and had no time to lose in preliminaries.

“There’s twa or three things to be done about the house before onybody can stir out o’ this,” said Jenny emphatically, pausing when she had half cleared the breakfast-table. “I want to ken, mem, if it’s your pleasure, what time we’re to gang away.”

“I have just been thinking—about the term, Jenny,” said her mistress, accepting Jenny’s adhesion quietly and without remark—“if we can get a tenant to Burnside.”

“I thought you would be wanting a tenant to Burnside,” muttered Jenny, “to make every table and chair in the house a shame to be seen, and the place no fit to live in when we come back; but it’s nane o’ Jenny’s business if the things maun be spoiled. I have had a woman at me this morning wi’ an offer to gang in my place. I’ve nae business to keep it out o’ your knowledge, so you may get Nelly Panton yet, if it’s your pleasure, instead o’ me. I’m speaking to your mother, Miss Menie; the like o’ you has nae call to put in your word. Am I to tell Nelly you would like to speak to her, mem—or what am I to say?”

And Jenny again planted her right foot firmly before her, again expanded her irascible nostril, and, with comic perversity and defiance, stood and waited for her mistress’s answer.

“Away you go, Jenny, and put your work in order,” said Mrs Laurie; “get somebody in from the Brigend to help you, and let everything be ready for the flitting—you know I don’t want Nelly Panton—no, you need not interrupt me—nor anybody else. We’ll all go to London together, and we’ll all come back again some time, if we’re spared. I don’t know how you would manage without us, Jenny; but see, there’s Menie with open eyes wondering what we should do without you.”

“Na, the bairn has discrimination,” said Jenny steadily; “that’s just what I say to mysel. Nae doubt it’s a great change to a woman at my time o’ life, but I just say what could the two ladies do, mair especially a young lassie like Miss Menie, and that’s enough to reconcile ane to mony a thing. Weel, I’ll see the wark putten in hands; but if you take my advice, mem, ye’ll see baith mistress and maid afore ye let fremd folk into Burnside. It’s no ilka hand that can keep up a room like this; for I ken mysel the things were nae mair like what they are now, when I came first, than fir wood’s like oak; and what’s the matter of twa or three pounds, by the month, for rent, in comparison wi’ ruining a haill house o’ furniture?—though, to be sure, it’s nae business o’ mine; and if folk winna take guid counsel when it’s offered, naebody can blame Jenny.”

So saying, Jenny went briskly to her kitchen, to set on foot immediate preparations for the removal, leaving her “guid counsel” for Mrs Laurie’s consideration. Mrs Laurie found little time to deliberate. She had few distant friends, and no great range of correspondents at any time, and another perusal of Miss Annie Laurie’s epistle set her down to answer it with a puzzled face. A little amusement, a little impatience, a little annoyance, drew together the incipient curve on Mrs Laurie’s brow, and Jenny’s advice got no such justice at her hands as would have satisfied Jenny, and was summarily dismissed when its time of consideration came.

CHAPTER VII.

“Johnnie Lithgow exists no longer.” The words chased the colour from Menie Laurie’s cheek, and drew a pitying exclamation from her lips. Alas, for Johnnie Lithgow’s mourning mother! But Menie read on and laughed, and was consoled. “There is no such person known about the office of the great paper; but Mr Lythgoe, the rising critic, the leader of popular judgments, and writer of popular articles, is fast growing into fame and notice. The days of the compositor are over, and I fear the author must be a little troubled about the plebeian family who once rejoiced the poor young printer’s heart. Yet the heart remains a very good heart, my dear Menie—vain, perhaps, and a little fickle and wavering, not quite knowing its own mind, but a very simple kindly heart in the main, and sure to come back to all the natural duties and loves. I give you full warrant to comfort the mother. Johnnie has been somewhat fêted and lionised of late, and is not, perhaps, at present exactly what our sober unexcitable friends call steady. His head is turned with the unusual attention he has been receiving, and perhaps a little salutary humiliation may be necessary to bring him down again; but I have no fear of him in the end. He is very clever, writes extremely well, and is one of the most wise and sensible of men—in print. I almost wonder that I have not mentioned him to you sooner, for he and I have seen a good deal of each other of late, and Johnnie is a very good fellow, I assure you—not without natural refinement, and very fresh, and hearty, and genial; moreover, a rising man, as the common slang goes, and one who has made a wonderful leap in a very short time; so we must pardon him in his first elation if he seems a little negligent of his friends.”

A slight flush of colour ran wavering over Menie’s cheek as “a little salutary humiliation may be necessary” she repeated under her breath, and, starting at the sound of her own voice, looked round guiltily, as if in terror lest she had been overheard. But there was no one to overhear—no one but her own heart, which, suddenly startled out of its quiet, looks round too with a timid, troubled glance, as if a ghost had crossed its line of vision, and hears these words echoing softly among all the trees. Well, there is no harm in the words, but Menie feels as if, in whispering them, she had betrayed some secret of her betrothed, and with an uneasy step and clouded face she turns away.

Why?—or what has Randall done to call this shadow up on Menie Laurie’s way? But Menie Laurie neither could or would tell, and only feels a cloud of vague vexation and unexplainable displeasure rise slowly up upon her heart.

Yet it is no very long time till Mrs Laurie hears the news, unshadowed by any dissatisfaction, and very soon after Menie is speeding along the Kirklands road restored to all her usual cloudlessness, though it happens somehow, that, after a second bold plunge at it in the stillness of her own room, which reddened Menie’s cheek again with involuntary anger, she skips this objectionable paragraph in Randall’s letter, and, asking herself half audibly, what Johnnie Lithgow is to her, solaces herself out of her uneasiness by Randall’s exultation over her own last letter. For Randall is most heartily and cordially rejoiced to think of having his betrothed so near him—there can be no doubt of that.

And here upon the hillside path, almost like one of those same delicate beechen boughs which wave over its summit, July Home comes fluttering down before the wind—her soft uncertain feet scarcely touching the ground, as you can think—her brown dress waving—her silky hair betraying itself as usual, astray upon her shoulders. Down comes July, not without a stumble now and then, over boulder or bramble, but looking very much as if she floated on the sweet atmosphere which streams down fresh and full from the top of the hill, and the elastic spring air could bear her well enough upon its sunny current for all the weight she has. Very simple are the girlish salutations exchanged when the friends meet. “Eh, Menie, where are you going?” and “Is that you, July?—you can come with me.”

And now the road has two shadows upon it instead of one, and a murmur of low-toned voices running like a hidden tinkle of water along the hedgerow’s side. “Johnnie Lithgow! eh, I’m glad he’s turned clever,” said little July; “he used to come up the hill at nights when nobody ever played with me; and I think, Menie—you’ll no be angry?—he had more patience than Randall, for I mind him once carrying me, when I was just a little thing, all the way round the wood to the Resting Stane, to see the sunset, and minding what I said too, though I was so wee. I’m glad, Menie—I’m sure I’m very glad; but Randall, being clever himself, might have told us about Johnnie Lithgow before.”

“You never can think that Johnnie Lithgow is as clever as Randall,” said Menie, indignantly. “That’s not what I mean either. Randall’s not clever, July. You need not look so strange at me. Clever! Jenny’s clever; I’m clever myself at some things; but Randall—I call Randall a genius, July.”

And Menie raised loftily the face which was now glowing with a flash of affectionate pride. With a little awe July assented; but July still in her inmost heart asserted Randall to be clever, and rather avoided a discussion of this perplexing word genius, which July did not feel herself quite competent to define or understand.

And now the road begins to slope upwards, the hedgerow breaks and opens upon braes of close grass, marked here and there by bars and streaks of brown, like stationary shadows, and rich with little nests of low-growing heather and hillside flowers. An amphitheatre of low hills opens now from the summit of this one, which the road mounts. Bare unwooded slopes, falling away at their base into cultivated fields, and rising upward in stretches of close-cropped pasture land; soft luxurious grass, sweet with its thyme and heather, with small eyes of flowers piercing up from under its close-woven blades—soft as summer couch need be, and elastic as ever repelled the foot of passing herdsman; but looking somewhat bare in its piebald livery, as it breaks upon the bright spring sky above.

And the road dives down—down into the hollows of the circle, where gleams a winding burn, and rises a village, its roofs of tile and thatch basking serenely in the sun. A little church, holding up a little open belfry against the hillside, as if entreating to be lifted higher, stands at the entrance of the village; and you can already see the little span-broad bridges that cross the burn, and the signboards which hang above the doors of the cottage shops in the main street. Here, too, keeping the road almost like an official of equal authority, the smithy glows with its fiery eye upon the kirk; for the kirk, you will perceive, is almost a new one, and has little pretensions to the hereditary reverence of its small dependency, standing there bare and alone, without a single grave to keep watch upon; whereas the smiddy’s antique roof is heavy with lichens; and ploughs and harrows, resplendent in primitive red and blue, obtrude themselves a little way beyond its door, with the satisfaction of conscious wealth.

And here is a cottage turning its back upon the burn, and modestly setting down its white doorstep upon the rude causeway; the door is open, and some one sits at work by the fireside within; but in a corner stands a sack of meal, and a little humble counter interposes sideways between the fire and the threshold. Some humble goods lie on the window-shelves, and the counter itself has a small miscellany—dim glasses, full of “sweeties;” dimmer still with balls of cotton, blue and white, with stiffly-twisted sticks of sampler worsted, and red and yellow stalks of barley-sugar, scarcely to be distinguished from the thread. Altogether the counter, with its dangling scales, the half-filled shelves that break the light from the window, and the few drawers behind, fit out the village shop where Mrs Lithgow does a little daily business, enough to keep herself, alone and widowed, in daily bread.

For Nelly Panton, sitting behind at the fire, is a mantua-maker, and maintains herself. By good fortune, this maintenance is very cheaply accomplished; and Nelly’s “drap parritch” and cup of tea are by much the smallest burden which her society entails upon her mother. Decent lass as Nelly is, she has come through no small number of vicissitudes, and swayed between household service and this same disconsolate mantua-making of hers, like the discontented pendulum—not to speak of two or three occasions past, when Nelly has been just on the eve of being married, a consummation which even the devout desire of Mrs Lithgow has not yet succeeded in bringing peacefully to pass—for Nelly and her lovers, as Mrs Lithgow laments pathetically, “can never gree lang enough,” and some kind fairy always interposes in time to prevent any young man of Kirklands from accomplishing to himself such a fate.

Mrs Lithgow’s dress is scarcely less doleful than her daughter: a petticoat of some dark woollen stuff, and a clean white short-gown, are scarcely enlivened by the check apron, bright blue and white as it is, which girds in the upper garment; but the close cap which marks her second widowhood encloses a face fresh, though care-worn, with lines of anxious thought something too clearly defined about the brow and cheeks. A little perplexity adds just now to the care upon the widow’s face; for upon her counter stands a square wooden box, strongly corded and sealed, over which, with much bewilderment, the good woman ponders. Very true, it is directed to Mrs Lithgow, Kirklands, and Kirklands knows no Mrs Lithgow but herself; but with a knife in her hand to cut the cord, and a little broken hammer beside her on the counter, with which she proposes to “prise” open the securely nailed lid, the widow still hangs marvelling over the address, and the broad red office-seal, and wonders once again who it can be that sends this mystery to her.

“I’ve heard of folk getting what lookit like a grand present, and it turning out naething but a wisp o’ straw, or a wecht o’ stanes,” said the perplexed Mrs Lithgow, as her young visitors saluted her; “but this is neither to ca’ very heavy nor very licht; and it’s no directed in a hand o write that ane might have kenned, but in muckle printed letters like a book; and I’m sure I canna divine, if I was thinking on a’body I ever kent a’ my days, wha could send such a thing to me.”

“But if you open the box you’ll see,” cried July Home. “Eh! I wish you would open it the time we’re here; for I think I ken it’s from Johnnie, and Menie Laurie has grand news of Johnnie in her letter. I was as glad as if it was me. He’s turned clever, Mrs Lithgow; he’s growing to be a great man, like our Randall. Eh! Menie, what ails her?”

Something ailed her that July did not know;—a trembling thrill of apprehensive joy, an intense realisation for the moment of all her terrors and sorrows, suddenly inspired, and flooded over with the light of a new hope. The colour fled from Mrs Lithgow’s very lips; the little broken hammer fell with a heavy clang upon the floor at her feet. Her eyes turned wistfully, eagerly, upon Menie; the light swam in them, and yet they could read so clearly the expression of this face.

And Menie, conquering her blush and hesitation, took out her letter, and read bravely so much of it as was suitable for the mother’s ear. The mother forgot all about the mysterious box, even though it seemed so likely now to come from Johnnie. She sat down abruptly on the wooden chair behind the counter; she lifted up her checked apron, and pressed it with both hands into the corners of her eyes. “My puir laddie! my puir laddie!”—You could almost have fancied it was some misfortune to Johnnie which caused this swelling of his mother’s heart.

“And he’s in among grand folk, and turning a muckle man himsel,” said Mrs Lithgow softly, after a considerable pause. “Was that what the letter said?—was that what the folk telled me?—and he’s my son for a’ that—Johnnie Lithgow, my ain little young bairn.”

“I think, mother, ye may just as weel let me open the box,” said Nelly, coming forward with her noiseless step. “We’ll ken by what’s in’t if he’s keeping thought of us; though I’m sure it’s no muckle like as if he was, keeping folk anxious sae lang, and him prospering. I’ll just open the box. I wouldna be ane to hang at his tails if Johnnie thought shame of his poor friends; but still a considerate lad would mind that there’s mony a little thing might be useful at Kirklands. I’ll open the box and see.”

The mother rose to thrust her away angrily. “Is it what he sends I’m heeding about, think ye?” she exclaimed, with momentary passion, “I’m his mother! I’m seeking naething but his ain welfare and well-doing. Was’t gifts I wanted, or profit by my son? But ane needna speak to you.”

“Eh! but there’s maybe a letter,” said July Home, with a little natural artifice. “Mrs Lithgow, I would open it and see.”

And Mrs Lithgow, with this hope, cut the cords vigorously, though with a trembling hand—rejecting, not without anger, the offered assistance of Nelly, who now crossed her hands demurely on her apron, and stood, virtuous and resigned, looking on. Little July, very eager and curious, could not restrain her restless fingers, but helped to loose the knots involuntarily with a zealous aid, which the widow did not refuse; and Menie, not quite sure that it was right to intrude upon the mother’s joy, but very certain that she would greatly like to see what Johnnie Lithgow sent home, lingered, with shyer and less visible curiosity, between the counter and the door.

But Mrs Lithgow’s hands, trembling with anxiety, and the excitement of great joy, and the little thin fingers of July, never very nervous at any time, made but slow progress in their work; and poor July even achieved a scratch here and there from refractory nails before it was concluded. When the lid had been fairly lifted off, a solemn pause ensued. No letter appeared; but a brilliant gown-piece of printed cotton lay uppermost, the cover and wrapper of various grandeurs below. Mrs Lithgow pulled out these hidden glories hurriedly, laying them aside with only a passing glance; a piece of silk, too grand by far for anybody within a mile of Kirklands; ribbons which even Menie Laurie beheld with a flutter of admiration; and a host of other articles of feminine adornment, so indisputably put together by masculine hands, that the more indifferent spectators were tempted to laughter at last. But Mrs Lithgow had no leisure to laugh—no time to admire the somewhat coarse shawl which she could wear, nor the gay gowns which she could not. Down to the very depths and conclusion of all, to the white paper lying in the bottom of the box; but not a scrap of written paper bade his mother receive all these from Johnnie. The gift came unaccompanied by a single word to identify the giver. Mrs Lithgow sat down again in her chair, subdued and silent, and Menie had discernment enough to see the bitter tears of disappointed hope that gathered in the mother’s eyes; but she said nothing, either of comment or complaint, till the slow business-like examination with which Nelly began to turn over these anonymous gifts, startled into sudden provocation and anger the excitement which, but for pride and jealous regard that no one should have a word to say against her son, would fain have found another channel.

“Eh! Mrs Lithgow, isn’t it bonnie?” cried simple little July Home, as she smoothed down with her hand the glistening folds of silk. Mrs Lithgow had laid violent hands upon it, to thrust it back into the box out of Nelly’s way; but as July spoke, her own womanish interest was roused, and now, when the first shock had passed, the tears in the widow’s eyes grew less salt and bitter; she looked at the beautiful fabric glistening in the light—she looked at the little pile of bright ribbons—at the warm comfortable shawl, and her heart returned to its first flush of thankfulness and content.

“It’s farowre grand for the like o’ me,” she said at last; “it would be mair becoming some o’ you young ladies; but a young lad’s no to be expected to ken about such things; and he’s bought it for the finest he could get, and spent a lock o’ siller on’t, to pleasure his mother. I’m no surprised mysel—it’s just like his kind heart; but there’s few folk fit to judge my Johnnie; he was never like other callants a’ his days.”

But still Mrs Lithgow could not bear Nelly’s slow matter-of-fact perusal, and comment on her new treasures. She put them up one by one, restored them to the box, and carried it away to her own room in her own arms, to be privately wept and rejoiced over there.

“Randall never sent home anything like yon,” said July softly to herself, as they returned to Burnside, “and Randall was clever before Johnnie Lithgow. I wonder he never had the thought.”

“Randall knows better,” said Menie. “When Randall sends things, he sends becoming things; it’s only you, July, that have not the thought: if Johnnie Lithgow had been wise, he would not have sent such presents to Kirklands.”

But just then a line of a certain favourite song crossed Menie’s mind against her will—“Wisdom’s sae cauld;” and July looked down upon her own printed frock, and thought a silken gown, like Johnnie Lithgow’s present, might be a very becoming thing. At seventeen—even at twenty—one appreciates a piece of kindly folly fully better than an act of wisdom.

CHAPTER VIII.

But Menie Laurie was by no means satisfied that even simple little July should make comparison so frequent between Randall, her own hero, and the altogether new and sudden elevation of Johnnie Lithgow. Johnnie Lithgow might be very clever, might be a newspaper conductor, and a rising man; but Randall—Randall, in spite of the little chillness of that assumed superiority which could think humiliation necessary to bring his youthful countryman down—in spite of Menie’s consciousness that there lacked something of the frank and generous tone with which one high spirit should acknowledge the excellence of another—Randall was still the ideal genius, the something so far above “clever,” that Menie felt him insulted by praise so mean as this word implied.

There was little time for speculation on the subject, yet many a mood of Menie’s was tinged by its passing gleam, for Menie sometimes thought her betrothed unappreciated, and was lofty and scornful, and disposed in his behalf to defy all the world. Sometimes impatient of the estimation, which, great though it was, was not great enough, Menie felt not without a consoling self-satisfaction that she alone did Randall perfect justice. Johnnie Lithgow!—what though he did write articles! Menie was very glad to believe, condescendingly, that he might be clever, but he never could be Randall Home.

“You’ll hae heard the news,” said Miss Janet, sitting very upright in one of the Burnside easy-chairs, with her hands crossed on her knee; “they say that you and our Randall, Miss Menie, my dear, were the first, between you, to carry word of it to his mother, and her breaking her heart about her son. But Mrs Lithgow’s gotten a letter frae Johnnie now, a’ about how grand he is—and I hear he’s paying a haill guinea by the week for his twa rooms, and seeing a’ the great folk in the land—no to say that he’s writing now the paper he ance printed, and is great friends with our Randy. Randy was aye awfu’ particular o’ his company. I was saying mysel, it was the best sign I heard of Johnnie Lithgow that Randall Home was taking him by the hand; I’m no meaning pride, Mrs Laurie. I’m sure I ken sae weel it’s a’ his ain doing, and the fine nature his Maker gave him, that I aye say we’ve nae right to be proud; but it would be sinning folks’ mercies no to ken—and I never saw a lad like Randall Home a’ my days.”

Menie said nothing in this presence. Shy at all times to speak of Randall—before her own mother and his aunt it was a thing impossible; but she glanced up hastily with glowing eyes, and a flush of sudden colour, to meet Miss Janet’s look. Miss Janet’s face was full of affectionate pride and tenderness, but the good simple features had always a little cloud of humility and deprecation hovering over them. Miss Janet knew herself liable to attack on many points, knew herself very homely, and not at all worthy of the honour of being Randall’s aunt, and had been snubbed and put down a great many times in the course of her kindly life—so Miss Janet was wont to deliver her modest sentiments with a little air of half-troubled propitiatory fear.

Mrs Laurie made little response. She was busy with her work at the moment, and, not without little angles of temper for her own share, did not always quite join in this devout admiration of Randall Home. Menie, “thinking shame,” said nothing either, and, in the momentary silence which ensued, Miss Janet’s heart rose with a flutter of apprehension; she feared she had said something amiss—too much or too little; and Miss Janet’s cheeks grew red under the abashed eyes which she bent so anxiously over the well-known pattern of Mrs Laurie’s carpet.

“I’m feared you’re thinking it’s a’ vain-glory that gars me speak,” said Miss Janet, tracing the outline with her large foot; “and it’s very true that ane deceives ane’s-sel in a thing like this; but it’s no just because he’s our Randall, Mrs Laurie; and it’s no that I’m grudging at Johnnie Lithgow for being clever—but I canna think he’s like my ain bairn.”

“A merry little white-headed fellow, with a wisp of curls,” said Mrs Laurie, good-humouredly—“No, he’s not like Randall, Miss Janet—I think I’ll answer for that as well as you; but we’ll see them both, very likely, when we get to London. Strange things happen in this world,” continued Menie’s mother, drawing herself up with a little conscious pride and pique, which the accompanying smile showed her own half amusement with. “There’s young Walter Wellwood of Kirkland will never be anything but a dull country gentleman, though he comes of a clever family, and has had every advantage; and here is a boy out of Kirklands parish-school taking up literature and learning at his own hand!”

Miss Janet was slightly disturbed, and looked uneasy. Randall too had begun his career in the parish-school of Kirklands: there was a suspicion in this speech of something derogatory to him.

“But the maister in Kirklands is very clever, Mrs Laurie,” said Miss Janet, anxiously; “he makes grand scholars. When our Randall gaed to the grammar-school in Dumfries, the gentlemen a’ made a wonder o’ him; and for a’ his natural parts, he couldna hae gotten on sae fast without a guid teacher; and it’s no every man could maister Randy. I mind at the time the gentlemen couldna say enough to commend the Dominie. I warrant they a’ think weel o’ him still, on account of his guid success, and the like o’ him deserves to get credit wi’ his laddies. I’m sure Johnnie Lithgow, having had nae other instruction, should be very grateful to the maister.”

“The maister will be very proud of him,” said Menie; “though they say in Kirklands that ever so many ministers have been brought up in the school. But never mind Johnnie Lithgow—everybody speaks of him now; and, mother, you were to tell Miss Janet about when we are going away.”

“I think John will never look out of the end window mair,” said Miss Janet. “I can see he’s shifting his chair already—him that used to be sae fond o’ the view; and I’m sure I’ll be very dreary mysel, thinking there’s naebody I ken in Burnside. But what if you dinna like London, Mrs Laurie? It’s very grand, I believe, and you’ve lived in great touns before, and ken the ways o’ the world better than the like o’ me; but after a country life, I would think ane would weary o’ the toun; and if you do, will you come hame?”

Mrs Laurie shook her head. “I was very well content in Burnside,” she said. “With my own will I never would have left it, Miss Janet; but I go for good reasons, and not for pleasure; and my reasons will last, whether I weary or no. There’s Menie must get masters, you know, and learn to be accomplished—or Miss Annie Laurie will put her to shame.”

“I dinna ken what she could learn, for my part,” said Miss Janet, affectionately, “nor how she could weel be better or bonnier, for a’body can see the genty lady-breeding Miss Menie’s got; and there’s naebody atween this and the hills needs to be telt o’ the kind heart and the pleasant tongue, and the face that every creature’s blithe to see; and I’m sure I never heard a voice like her for singing; and a’ the grand tunes she can play, and draw landscapes, and work ony kind o’ bonnie thing you like to mention. Didna you draw a likeness o’ Jenny, Miss Menie, my dear? And I’m sure yon view you took frae the tap o’ our hill is just the very place itsel—as natural as can be; and, for my part, Mrs Laurie, I dinna ken what mortal could desire for her mair.”

Mrs Laurie smiled; but the mother was not displeased, though she did think it possible still to add to Menie’s acquirements, if not to her excellence; and Menie herself went off laughing and blushing, fully resolved in her own mind to destroy forthwith that likeness wherein poor Jenny’s “high shouther” figured with an emphasis and distinctness extremely annoying to the baffled artist, whose pencil ran away with her very often in these same much-commended drawings, and who was sadly puzzled in most cases how to make two sides of anything alike. And Menie knew her tunes were anything but grand, her landscapes not at all remarkable for truth—yet Menie was by no means distressed by Miss Janet’s simple-hearted praise.

The evening was spent in much talk of the departure. July Home had followed her aunt, and sat in reverential silence listening to the conversation, and making a hundred little confidential communications of her own opinion to Menie, which Menie had some trouble in reporting for the general good. It was nine o’clock of the moonlight April night when the farmer of Crofthill came to escort his “womankind” home. The clear silent radiance darkened the distant hills, even while it lent a silver outline to their wakeful guardian range, and Menie came in a little saddened from the gate, where the father of her betrothed had grasped her hand so closely in his good-night. “No mony mair good-nights now,” said John Home. “I’ll no get up my heart the morn, though it is the first day of summer. You should have slipped up the hill the night to gather the dew in the morning, May; but I’ll learn to think the May mornings darker than they used to be, when your ain month takes my bonnie lassie from Burnside. Weel, weel, ane’s loss is anither’s gain; but I grudge you to London smoke, and London crowds. You must mind, May, my woman, and kept your hame heart.”

Your home heart, Menie—your heart of simple trust and untried quiet. Is it a good wish, think you, kind and loving though the wisher be? But Menie looks up at the sky, with something trembling faintly in her mind, like the quiver of this charmed air under the flood of light—and has note of unknown voices, faces, visions, coming in upon the calm of her fair youth, unknown, unfeared; and so she turns to the home lights again, with nothing but the sweet thrill of innocent expectation to rouse her, secure in the peace and tranquil serenity of this home heart of hers, which goes away softly, through the moonlight and the shadow, through the familiar gloom of the little hall, and into the comforts of the mother’s parlour, singing its song of conscious happiness under its breath.

CHAPTER IX.

Left behind! July Home has dried her eyes at last; and out of many a childish fit of tears and sobbing, suddenly becomes silent like a child, and, standing on the road, looks wistfully after them, with her lips apart, and her breast now and then trembling with the swell of her half-subsided grief. The gentle May wind has taken out of its braid July’s brown silky hair, and toys with it upon July’s neck with a half-derisive sympathy, as a big brother plays with the transitory sorrow of a child. But the faint colour has fled from July’s cheek, except just on this one flushed spot where it has been resting on her hand; and with a wistful longing, her young innocent eyes travel along the vacant road. No one is there to catch this lingering look; and even the far-off sound, which she bends forward to hear, has died away in the distance. Another sob comes trembling up—another faint swell of her breast, and quiver of her lip—and July turns sadly away into the forsaken house, to which such a sudden air of emptiness and desolation has come; and, sitting down on the carpet by the window, once more bends down her face into her hands, and cries to her heart’s content.

There is no change in the parlour of Burnside—not a little table, not a single chair, has been moved out of its place; yet it is strange to see the forlorn deserted look which everything has already learned to wear. Mrs Laurie’s chair gapes with its open empty arms—Menie’s stool turns drearily towards the wall—and the centre table stands out chill and prominent, cleared of all kindly litter, idle and presumptuous, the principal object in the room, no longer submitting to be drawn about here and there, to be covered or uncovered for anybody’s pleasure. And, seated close into the window which commands the road, very silent and upright, shawled and bonneted, sits Miss Janet Home, who, perchance, since she neither rebukes nor comforts poor little weeping July, may possibly be crying too.

And Jenny’s busy feet waken no home-like echoes now in the bright kitchen, where no scrutiny, however keen, could find speck or spot to discredit Jenny. Instead of the usual genius of the place, a “strange woman” rests with some apparent fatigue upon the chair by the wall which flanks Jenny’s oaken table, and, wiping her forehead as she takes off her bonnet, eyes at a respectful distance the fire, which is just now making a valorous attempt to keep up some heartiness and spirit in the bereaved domain which misses Jenny. The strange bonnet, with its gay ribbons, makes a dull reflection in the dark polish of the oak, but the warm moist hand of its owner leaves such a mark as no one ever saw there during the reign of Jenny; and Jenny would know all her forebodings of destruction to the furniture in a fair way for accomplishment, could she see how the new tenant’s maid, sent forward before her mistress to take possession, spends her first hour in Burnside.

But Jenny, far off and unwitting, full of a child’s simplicity of wonder and admiration—yet sometimes remembering, with her natural impatience, that this delight and interest does not quite become her dignity—travels away—to Dumfries—to Edinburgh—to the new world, of which she knows as little as any child. And Menie Laurie, full of vigorous youthful spirits, and natural excitement, forgets, in half an hour, the heaviness of the leave-taking, and manages, with many a laugh and wreathed smile, to veil much wonder and curiosity of her own, under the unveilable exuberance of Jenny’s. Mrs Laurie herself, clouded and careworn though she looks, and dreary as are her backward glances to the familiar hills of her own country, clears into amusement by-and-by; and the fresh Mayday has done its work upon them all, and brightened the little party into universal smiles and cheerfulness, before the journey draws towards its end, and weariness comes in to restore the quiet, if not to restore the tears and sadness, with which they took their leave of home.

“And this is the main street, I’ll warrant,” said Jenny, as Menie led her on the following morning over the bright pavement of Princes Street; “and I would just like to ken, Miss Menie, what a’ thae folk’s doing out-by at this time o’ the day? Business? havers! I’m no that great a bairn that I dinna ken the odds between a decent woman gaun an errand, and idle folk wandering about the street. Eh! but they are even-down temptations thae windows! The like of that now for a grand gown to gang to parties! And I reckon ye’ll be seeing big folk yonder-away—and the Englishers are awfu’ hands for grand claes. I dinna think ye’ve onything now ye could see great company in, but that blue thing you got a twelvemonth since, and twa-three bits o’ muslin. Eh! Miss Menie, bairn, just you look at that!”

And Menie paused, well pleased to look, and admired, if not so loudly, at least with admiration quite as genuine as Jenny’s own. But as they passed on, Jenny’s captivated eyes found every shop more glorious than the other, and Jenny’s eager hands had fished out of the narrow little basket she carried, a long narrow purse of chamois leather, in which lay safe a little bundle of one-pound notes, prisoned in the extreme corners at either end. Jenny’s fingers grew nervous as they fumbled at the strait enclosure wherein her humble treasure was almost too secure, and Jenny was tremulously anxious to ascertain which of all these splendours Menie liked best, a sublime purpose dawning upon her own mind the while. And now it is extremely difficult to draw Jenny up the steep ascent of the Calton Hill, and fix her wandering thoughts upon the scene below. It is very fine, Jenny fancies; but after all, Jenny, who has been on terms of daily intimacy with Criffel, sees nothing startling about Arthur’s Seat—which is only, like its southland brother, “a muckle hill”—whereas not even the High Street of Dumfries holds any faintest shadowing of the glory of these Princes Street shops; and Jenny’s mind is absorbed in elaborate calculations, and her lips move in the deep abstraction of mental arithmetic, while still her fingers pinch the straitened corners of the chamois-leather purse.

“I’ll can find the house grand mysel. I ken the street, and I ken the stair, as weel as if I had lived in’t a’ my days,” says Jenny eagerly. “Touts, bairn! canna ye let folk abee? I would like to hear wha would fash their heads wi’ Jenny—and I saw a thing I liked grand in ane o’ thae muckle shops. Just you gang your ways hame to your mamma, Miss Menie; there’s nae fears o’ me.”

“But, Jenny, I’ll go with you and help you to buy,” said Menie. “I would like to see into that great shop myself.”

“Ye’ll see’t another time,” said Jenny, coaxingly. “Just you gang your ain gate, like a guid bairn, and let Jenny gang hers ance in her life. I’ll let you see what it is after I have bought it—but I’m gaun my lane the now. Now, Miss Menie, I’m just as positive as you. My patience!—as if folk couldna be trusted to ware their ain siller—and the mistress waiting on you, and me kens the house better than you! Now you’ll just be a guid bairn, and I’ll take my ain time, and be in in half an hour.”

Thus dismissed, Menie had no resource but to betake herself with some laughing wonder to the lodging where Mrs Laurie rested after the journey of yesterday; while Jenny, looking jealously behind her to make sure that she was not observed, returned to a long and loving contemplation of the brilliant silk gown which had caught her fancy first.

“I never bought her onything a’ her days, if it wasna ance that bit wee coral necklace, that she wore when she was a little bairn—and she aye has it in her drawer yet, for puir auld Jenny’s sake,” mused Jenny at the shop window; “and I’m no like to need muckle siller mysel, unless there’s some sair downcome at hand. I wouldna say but I’ll be feared at the price, wi’ a’ this grand shop to keep up—but I think I never saw onything sae bonnie, and I’ll just get up a stout heart, and gang in and try.”

But many difficulties beset this daring enterprise of Jenny’s. First, the impossibility of having brought to her the one magnificent gown of gowns—then a fainting of horror at the price—then a sudden bewilderment and wavering, consequent upon the sight of a hundred others as glorious as the first. While Jenny mused and pondered with curved brow and closed lips, two or three very fine gentlemen, looking on with unrestrained amusement, awoke her out of her deliberations, and out of her first awe of themselves, into a very distinct and emphatic fuff of resentment, and Jenny’s decision was made at last somewhat abruptly, in the midst of a smothered explosion of laughter, which sent her hasty short steps pattering out of the shop, in intense wrath. But in spite of Jenny’s expanded nostrils, and scarcely restrainable vituperation, Jenny carried off triumphantly, in her arms, the gown of gowns; and Jenny’s indignation did not lessen the swell of admiring pride with which she contemplated, pressed to her bosom tenderly, the white paper parcel wherein her gift lay hid.

“Ye’ll let me ken how you like this, Miss Menie,” said Jenny, peremptorily, thrusting the parcel into Menie’s hand, at the door of her mother’s room; “and see if some o’ your grand London mantua-makers canna make such a gown out o’t as ye might wear ony place. Take it ben—I’m no wanting ye to look at it here.”

“But what is it?” asked Menie, wonderingly.

“You have naething ado but open it and see,” was the answer; “and ye can put it on on your birthday if you like—that’s the 10th o’ next month—there’s plenty o’ time to get it made—and I’ll gang and ask thae strange folk about the dinner mysel.”

But neither message nor voice could reach Jenny for a full hour thereafter. Jenny was a little afraid of thanks, and could not be discovered in parlour or kitchen, though the whole “flat” grew vocal with her name. Penetrating at last into the depths of the dark closet where Jenny slept, Menie found her seated on her trunk, with her fingers in her ears; but this precaution had evidently been quite ineffectual so far as Jenny’s sharp sense of hearing was concerned. Menie Laurie put her own arms within the projected arm of the follower of the family, and drew her away to her mother’s room. Like a culprit, faintly resisting, Jenny went.

“I’m sure if I had kent ye would have been as pleased,” said Jenny, when she had in some degree recovered herself, “ye might have gotten ane long ago; but ye’ll mind Jenny when ye put it on, and I’m sure it’s my heart’s wish baith it and you may be lang to the fore, when Jenny’s gane and forgotten out o’ mind. ’Deed ay, it’s very bonnie. I kent I was a gey guid judge mysel, and it was the first ane I lighted on, afore we had been out o’ the house ten minutes—it’s been rinning in my head ever since then.”

“But, Jenny, it must have been very expensive,” said Mrs Laurie, quickly.

“I warrant it was nae cheaper than they could help,” said Jenny. “Eh! mem, the manners o’ them—and a’ dressed out like gentlemen, too. I thought the first ane that came to me was a placed minister, at the very least; and to see the breeding o’ them, nae better than as mony hinds! Na, I would like to see the cottar lad in a’ Kirklands that would have daured to make his laugh o’ me!”

A few days’ delay in Edinburgh gave Mrs Laurie space and opportunity of settling various little matters of business, which were necessary for the comfort of their removal; and then the little family embarked in the new steamer, which had but lately superseded the smack, with some such feelings of forlornness and excitement as Australian emigrants might have in these days. Jenny set herself down firmly in a corner of the deck, with her back against the bulwark of the ship, and her eyes tenaciously fixed upon a coil of rope near at hand. Jenny had a vague idea that this might be something serviceable in case of shipwreck, and with jealous care she watched it; a boat, too, swayed gently in its place above her—there was a certain security in being near it; but Jenny’s soul was troubled to see Menie wandering hither and thither upon the sunny deck, and her mother quietly reading by the cabin door. Jenny thought it something like a tempting of Providence to read a book securely in this frail ark, which a sudden caprice of uncertain wind and sea might throw in a moment into mortal peril.

But calm and fair as ever Mayday shone, this quiet morning brightened into noon, and their vessel rustled bravely through the Firth, skirting the southern shore. Past every lingering suburban roof—past the sea-bathing houses, quiet on the sands—gliding by the foot of green North-Berwick Law—passing like a shadow across the gloomy Bass, where it broods upon the sea, like a cairn of memorial stones over its martyrs dead—past the mouldering might of old Tantallon, sending a roll of white foam up upon those little coves of Berwickshire, which here and there open up a momentary glimpse of red-roofed fisher-houses, and fisher cobbles resting on the beach under shelter of the high braes and fretted rocks of the coast. Menie Laurie, leaning over the side, looks almost wistfully sometimes at those rude little houses, lying serene among the rocks like a sea-bird’s nest. Many a smuggler’s romance—many a story of shipwreck and daring bravery, must dwell about this shore; the young traveller only sees how the tiled roof glows against the rock which lends its friendly support behind—how the stony path leads downward to the boat—how the wife at the cottage door looks out, shading her eyes with her hands, and the fisher bairns shout along the sea margin, where only feet amphibious could find footing, and clap their hands in honour of the new wonder, still unfamiliar to their coast. Something chill comes over Menie as her eye lingers on these wild rock-cradled hamlets, so far apart from all the world. Stronger waves of the ocean are breaking here upon the beach, and scarcely a house among them has not lost a father or son at sea; yet there steals a thrill of envy upon the young voyager as one by one they disappear out of her sight. So many homes, rude though their kind is, and wild their place—but as for Menie Laurie, and Menie Laurie’s mother, they are leaving home behind.

And now the wide sea sweeps into the sky before them—the northern line of hills receding far away among the clouds, and fishing-boats and passing vessels speck the great breadth of water faintly, with long distances between, and an air of forlorn solitude upon the whole. And the day wanes, and darkness steals apace over the sky and sea. Landward born and landward bred, Jenny sets her back more firmly against the bulwark, and will not be persuaded to descend, though the night air is chill upon her face. Jenny feels some security in her own vigilant unwavering watch upon those great folds of sea-water—those dark cliffs of Northumberland—those fierce castles glooming here and there out from the gathering night. If sudden squall or tempest should fall upon this quiet sea, Jenny at least will have earliest note of it, and with an intense concentration of watchfulness she maintains her outlook; while Mrs Laurie and Menie, reluctantly leaving her, lie down, not without some kindred misgivings, to their first night’s rest at sea.

CHAPTER X.

A second night upon these untrusted waters found the travellers a little less nervous and timid, but the hearts of all lightened when the early sunshine showed them the green flat river-banks on either side of their cabin windows. Menie, hurrying on deck, was the first to see over the flat margin and glimmering reach the towers of Greenwich rising against its verdant hill. The sun was dancing on the busy Thames; wherries, which Menie’s eyes followed with wonder—so slight and frail they looked—shot across the river like so many flying arrows; great hay barges, heavy with their fragrant freight, and gay with brilliant colour, blundered up the stream midway, like peasants on a holiday; and high and dark, with their lines of little prison-windows, these great dismasted wooden castles frowned upon the sunny water, dreary cages of punishment and convict crime. Then came the houses, straggling to the river’s edge—then a passing glimpse of the great strong-ribbed bony skeletons which by-and-by should breast the sea-waves proudly, men-o’-war—then the grand placid breadth of the river palace, with the light lying quiet in its green quadrangle, and glimpses of blue sky relieving its cloistered fair arcade. Further on and further, and Jenny rubs her wide awake but very weary eyes, and shakes her clenched hand at the clumsy colliers and enterprising sloops which begin to shoot across “our boat’s” encumbered way; and now we strike into the very heart of a maze of ships, built in rank and file against the river’s side, and straying about here and there, even in the mid course of the stream: almost impossible, Menie, to catch anything but an uncertain glimpse of these quaint little wharfs, and strange small old-world gables, which grow like so many fungi at the water’s edge; but yonder glows the golden ball and cross—yonder rises the world-famed dome, guardian of the world’s chiefest city—and there it fumes and frets before us, stretching upward far away—far beyond the baffled horizon line, which fades into the distance, all chafed and broken with crowded spires and roofs—London—Babylon—great battle-ground of vexed humanity—the crisis scene of Menie Laurie’s fate.

But without a thought or fear of anything like fate—only with some fluttering expectations, tremors, and hopes, Menie Laurie stood upon the steamer’s deck as it came to anchor slowly and cumbrously before the vociferous pier. In presence of all this din and commotion, a silence of abstraction and reverie wrapt her, and Menie looked up unconsciously upon the flitting panorama which moved before her dreamy eyes. Mrs Laurie’s brow had grown into curves of care again, and Jenny, jealous and alert, kept watch over the mountain of luggage which she had piled together by many a strenuous tug and lift—for Jenny already meditated kilting up her best gown round her waist, and throwing off her shawl to leave her sturdy arms unfettered, for the task of carrying some of these trunks and lighter boxes to the shore.

“Keep me, what’s a’ the folk wanting yonder?” said Jenny; “they canna be a’ waiting for friends in the boat; and I reckon the captain durstna break the mail-bags open, so it canna be for letters. Eh, Miss Menie, just you look up there at that open in the houses—what an awfu’ crowd’s up in yon street! What’ll be ado! I’ve heard say there’s aye a great fire somegate in London, and folk aye troop to see a fire—but then they never happen but at night. My patience! what can it be?”

Whatever it is, Menie’s eye has caught something less distant, which wakes up her dreaming face like a spell. While Jenny gazes and wonders at the thronging passengers of the distant street, Menie’s face floods over with a flush of ruddy light like the morning sky. Her shy eyelids droop a moment over the warm glow which sparkles under them—her lips move, breaking into a host of wavering smiles—her very figure, slight and elastic, expands with this thrill of sudden pleasure. Your mother there looks gravely at the shore—a strange, alien, unkindly place to her—and already anticipates, with some care and annoyance, the trouble of landing, and the delay and further fatigue to be encountered before her little family can reach their new home; and Jenny is uttering a child’s wonders and surmises by your side—what is this, Menie Laurie, that makes the vulgar pier a charmed spot to you?

Only another eager face looking down—another alert animated figure pressing to the very edge—impatient hands thrusting interposing porters and cabmen by—and eyes all a-glow with loving expectation, searching over all the deck for the little party which they have not yet descried. Involuntarily Menie raises her hand, her breath comes quick over her parted lips, and in her heart she calls to him with shy joy. He must have heard the call, surely, by some art magic, though the common air got no note of it, for see how he bends, with that sudden flush upon his face; and Menie meets the welcoming look, the keen gaze of delight and satisfaction, and lays her hand upon her mother’s arm timidly, to point out where Randall Home waits for them; but he does something more than wait—and there is scarcely a possibility of communication with the crowded quay, as these unaccustomed eyes are inclined to fancy, when a quick step rings upon the deck beside them, and he is here.

But Menie does not need to blush for her betrothed—though those shy bright eyes of hers, wavering up and down with such quick unsteady glances, seem to light into richer colour every moment the glow upon her cheeks—for Randall is a true son of John Home of Crofthill, inheriting the stately figure, the high-crested head, with its mass of rich curls, the blue, clear, penetrating eyes. And Randall bears these natural honours with a grace of greater refinement, though a perfectly cool spectator might think, perchance, that even the more conscious dignity of the gentleman’s son did not make up for the kindly gleam which takes from the farmer father’s blue eyes all suspicion of coldness. But it is impossible to suspect coldness in Randall’s glance now—his whole face sparkles with the glow of true feeling and genuine joy. The one of them did not think the other beautiful a few days—a few hours—ago, even with all the charm of memory and absence to make them fair—and neither are beautiful, nor near it, to everyday eyes; but with this warm light on them—happy, and true, and pure—they are beautiful to each other now.

“Weel, I wouldna say there was mony like him, ’specially amang thae English, after a’,” said Jenny, under her breath.

“What do you say, Jenny?” Mrs Laurie, who has already had her share of Randall’s greetings, and been satisfied therewith, thinks it is something about the luggage—which luggage, to her careful eyes, comes quite in the way of Randall Home.

“I was saying—weel, ’deed it’s nae matter,” said Jenny, hastily recollecting that her advice had not been asked before Menie’s engagement, and that she had never deigned to acknowledge any satisfaction with the same, “but just it’s my hope there’s to be some safer gate ashore than yon. Eh, my patience! if it’s no like a drove o’ wild Irish, a’ pouring down on us! But I would scarce like to cross the burn on that bit plank, and me a’ the boxes to carry. I needna speak—the mistress pays nae mair heed to me; but, pity me! we’re no out o’ peril yet—they’ll sink the boat!”

And Jenny watched with utter dismay the flood of invading porters and idle loungers from the quay, and with indignation looked up to, and apostrophised, the careless captain on the paddle-box, who could coolly look on and tolerate this last chance of “sinking the boat.” From these terrors, however, Jenny was suddenly awakened into more active warfare. A parcel of these same thronging mercenaries assailed her own particular pile of trunks and boxes, and Jenny, furious and alarmed, flew to the defence.

But by-and-by—a tedious time to Mrs Laurie, though it flew like an arrow over the heads of Randall and Menie, and over Jenny’s fierce contention—they were all safely established at last in a London hackney-coach, with so much of the lighter luggage as it could or would convey. Randall had permission to come to them that very night, so nothing farther was possible; he went away after he had lingered till he could linger no longer. Mrs Laurie leaned back in her corner with a long-drawn sigh—Jenny, on the front seat, muttered out the conclusion of her fuff—while Menie looked out with dazzled eyes, catching every now and then among the stranger passengers a distant figure, quick and graceful; nor till they were miles away did Menie recollect that now this vision of her fancy could not be Randall Home.

Miles away—it was hard to fancy that through these thronged and noisy streets one could travel miles. Always a long array of shops, and warehouses, and dingy houses—always a pavement full and crowded—always a stream of vehicles beside their own in the centre of the way—now and then a break into some wider space, a square, or cross, or junction of streets—here and there a great public building, or an old characteristic house, which Menie feels sure must be something notable, if anybody were by to point it out. Jenny, interested and curious at first, is by this time quite stunned and dizzy, and now and then cautiously glances from the window, with a strong suspicion that she has been singled out for a mysterious destiny, and that the cab-driver has some desperate intention of maddening his passengers, by driving them round and round in a circle of doom through these bewildering streets. Nothing but the hum of other locomotion, the jolting din of their own, the jar over the stones of the causeway, the stream of passengers left behind, and houses gliding past them, give evidence of progress, till, by-and-by, the stream slackens, the noises decrease—trees break in here and there among the houses—dusty suburban shrubberies—villakins standing apart, planted in bits of garden ground—and then, at last, the tired horse labours up a steep ascent; long palings, trees, and green slopes of land, reveal themselves to the eyes of the weary travellers, and, under the full forenoon sun, pretty Hampstead, eagerly looked for, appears through the shabby cab-windows, with London in a veil of mist lying far off at its feet.

Instinctively Mrs Laurie puts up her hands to draw her veil forward, and straighten the edge of her travelling-bonnet—instinctively Menie looses the ribbons of hers, to shed back the hair from her flushed cheek. Jenny, not much caring what the inhabitant of Heathbank Cottage may think of her, only gathers up upon her knee a full armful of bags and baskets, and draws her breath hard—a note of anticipatory disdain and defiance—as she nods her head backward, with a toss of impatience, upon the glass behind her. And now the driver looks back to point with his whip to a low house on the ascent before him, and demands if he is right in thinking this ’Eathbank. Nobody can answer; but, after a brief dialogue with the proprietor of a passing donkey, the cabman stirs his horse with a chirrup, and a touch of the lash. It is ’Eathbank, and they are at their journey’s end.

Home—well, one has seen places that look less like home. You can just see the low roof, the little bits of pointed gable, the small lattice-windows of the upper storey, above the thick green hawthorn hedge that closes round. A tall yew-tree looks out inquisitively over the hawthorns, pinched, and meagre, and of vigilant aspect, not quite satisfied, as it would seem, with the calm enjoyment of the cows upon this bank of grass without; but Jenny’s heart warms to the familiar kye, which might be in Dumfriesshire—they look so home-like. Jenny’s lips form into the involuntary “pruh.” Jenny’s senses are refreshed by the balmy breath of the milky mothers—and Menie’s eyes rejoice over a glorious promise of roses and jasmine on yon sunny wall, and a whole world of clear unclouded sky and sunny air embracing yonder group of elm-trees. Even Mrs Laurie’s curved brow smoothes and softens—there is good promise in the first glance of Heathbank.

At the little gate in the hedge, Miss Annie Laurie’s favourite serving-maiden, in a little smart cap, collar, and embroidered apron, which completely overpower and bewilder Jenny, stands waiting to receive them. Everything looks so neat, so fresh, so unsullied, that the travellers grow flushed and heated with a sudden sense of contrast, and remember their own travel-soiled garments and fatigued faces painfully; but Menie has only cast one pleased look upon the smooth green lawn which shrines the yew-tree—made one step upon the well-kept gravel path, and still has her hand upon the carriage-door, half turning round to assist her mother, when a sudden voice comes round the projecting bow-window of Heathbank Cottage—a footstep rings on the walk, an appearance reveals itself in the bright air. Do you think it is some young companion whom your good aunt’s kindness has provided for you, Menie—some one light of heart and young of life, like your own May-time? Look again, as it comes tripping along the path in its flowing muslin and streaming ringlets. Look and cast down your head, shy Menie, abashed you know not why—for what is this?

Something in a very pretty muslin gown, with very delicate lace about its throat and hands, and curls waving out from its cheeks. Look, too, what a thin slipper—what a dainty silken stocking reveals itself under the half-transparent drapery! Look at these ringing metallic toys suspended from its slender waist, at the laced kerchief in its hand, at its jubilant pace—anywhere—anywhere but at the smile that fain would make sunshine on you—the features which wear their most cordial look of welcome. Menie Laurie’s eyes seek the gravel path once more, abashed and irresponsive. Menie Laurie’s youthful cheek reddens with a brighter colour; her hand is slow to detach itself from the carriage door—though Menie Laurie’s grand-aunt flutters before her with outstretched arms of gracious hospitality, inviting her embrace.

“My pretty little darling, welcome to Heathbank,” says the voice; and the voice is not unpleasant, though it is pitched somewhat too high. “Kiss me, love—don’t let us be strangers. I expect you to make yourself quite at home.”

And Menie passively and with humility submits to be kissed—a process of which she has had little experience hitherto—and stands aside, suddenly very much subdued and silent, while the stranger flutters into the carriage window to tender the same sign of regard to Menie’s mother. Menie’s mother, better prepared, maintains a tolerable equanimity; but Menie herself has been struck dumb, and cannot find a word to say, as she follows with a subdued step into the sacred fastnesses of Heathbank. The muslin floats, the ringlets wave, before the fascinated eyes of Menie, and Menie listens to the voice as if it were all a dream.

CHAPTER XI.

“My patience! but ye’ll no tell me, Miss Menie, that yon auld antick is the doctor’s aunt?”

“She was no older than my father, though she was his aunt, Jenny,” said Menie Laurie, with humility. Menie was something ashamed and had not yet recovered herself of the first salute.

“Nae aulder than the doctor!—I wouldna say; your mamma hersel is no sae young as she has been; but the like o’ yon!”

“Look, Jenny, what a pleasant place,” said the evasive Menie; “though where the heath is—but I suppose as they call this Heathbank we must be near it. Look, Jenny, down yonder, at the steeple in the smoke, and how clear the air is here, and this room so pleasant and lightsome. Are you not pleased, Jenny?”

“Yon’s my lady’s maid,” said Jenny, with a little snort of disdain. “They ca’ her Maria, nae less—set her up! like a lady’s sel in ane o’ your grand novelles; and as muckle dress on an ilkaday as I’ve seen mony a young lady gang to the kirk wi’, Miss Menie—no to say your ain very sel’s been plainer mony a day. Am I no pleased? Is’t like to please folk to come this far to an outlandish country, and win to a house at last wi’ a head owre’t like yon!”

“Whisht, Jenny!” Menie Laurie has opened her window softly, with a consciousness of being still a stranger, and in a stranger’s house. The pretty white muslin curtains half hide her from Jenny, and Jenny stands before the glass and little toilet-table, taking up sundry pretty things that ornament it, with mingled admiration and disdain, surmising what this, and this, is for, and wondering indignantly whether the lady of the house can think that Menie stands in need of the perfumes and cosmetics to which she herself resorts. But the room is a very pretty room, with its lightly-draped bed, and bright carpet, and clear lattice-window. Looking round, Jenny may still fuff, but has no reason to complain.

And Menie, leaning out, feels the soft summer air cool down the flush upon her cheeks, and lets her thoughts stray away over the great city yonder, where the sunshine weaves itself among the smoke, and makes a strange yellow tissue, fine and light to veil the Titan withal. The heat is leaving her soft cheek, her hair plays on it lightly, the wind fingering its loosened curls like a child, and Menie’s eyes have wandered far away with her thoughts and with her heart.

Conscious of the sunshine here, lying steadily on the quiet lawn, the meagre yew-tree, the distant garden-path—conscious of the soft bank of turf, where these calm cattle repose luxuriously—of the broad yellow sandy road which skirts it—of the little gleam of water yonder in a distant hollow—but, buoyed upon joyous wings, hovering like a bird over an indistinct vision of yonder pier, and deck, and crowded street—a little circle enclosing one lofty figure, out of which rises this head, with its natural state and grace, out of which shine those glowing ardent eyes—and Menie, charmed and silent, looks on and watches, seeing him come and go through all the ignoble crowd—the crowd which has ceased to be ignoble when it encloses him.

And voices of children ringing through the sunshine, and a sweet, soft, universal tinkle, as of some fairy music in the air, flow into Menie Laurie’s meditation, but never fret its golden thread; for every joy of sight and sound finds some kindred in this musing; and the voices grow into a sweet all-hail, and the hum of distant life lingers on her ear like the silver tone of fame—Fame that is coming—coming nearer every day, throwing the glow of its purple royal, the sheen of its diamond crown upon his head and on his path,—and the girl’s heart, overflooded with a light more glorious than the sunshine, forgets itself, its own identity and fate, in dreaming of the nobler fate to which its own is bound.

“A young friend of yours?—you may depend upon my warmest welcome for him, my dear Mrs Laurie,” says a voice just emerging into the air below, which sends Menie back in great haste, and with violent unconscious blushes, from the window. “Mr Randall Home?—quite a remarkable name, I am sure. Something in an office? Indeed! But then, really, an office means so many very different things—may be of any class, in fact—and a literary man? I am delighted. He must be a very intimate friend to have seen you already.”

Menie waits breathless for the answer, but in truth Mrs Laurie is very little more inclined to betray her secret than she is herself.

“We have known him for many years—a neighbour’s son,” said Mrs Laurie, with hesitation; “yet indeed it is foolish to put off what I must tell you when you see them together. Randall and my Menie are—I suppose I must say, though both so young—engaged, and of course it is natural he should be anxious. I have no doubt you will be pleased with him; but I was hurried and nervous a little this morning, or I should have postponed his first visit a day or two, till we ourselves were less perfect strangers to you, Miss Annie.”

“I beg—” said Miss Annie Laurie, lifting with courteous deprecation her thin and half-bared arm. “I felt quite sure, when I got your letter, that we could not be strangers half an hour, and this is really quite a delightful addition;—true love—young love!—ah, my dear Mrs Laurie, where can there be a greater pleasure than to watch two unsophisticated hearts expanding themselves! I am quite charmed—a man of talent, too—and your pretty little daughter, so young and so fresh, and so beautifully simple. I am sure you could not have conferred a greater privilege upon me—I shall feel quite a delight in their young love. Dear little creature—she must be so happy; and I am sure a good mother like you must be as much devoted to him as your darling Menie.”

Mrs Laurie, who was not used to speak of darling Menies, nor to think it at all essential that she should be devoted to Randall Home, was considerably confused by this appeal, and could only answer in a very quiet tone, which quite acted as a shadow to Miss Annie’s glow of enthusiasm, that Randall was a very good young man, and that she had never objected to him.

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” said the greatly interested Miss Annie. “My dear Mrs Laurie, I am afraid you must have had some other, perhaps more ambitious views, or you could not possibly—with your experience, too—speak with so little interest of your dear child’s happiness.”

Here Menie ventured to glance out. The lady of the house swayed lightly back and forward, with one foot on the ground and another on the close turf of the little lawn, switching the yew-tree playfully with a wand of hawthorn; and the wind blew Miss Annie’s long ringlets against her withered cheek and fluttered the lace upon her arm, with a strange contempt for her airy graces, and for the levity so decayed and out of date, which Menie felt herself blush to see. Opposite, upon the grass, stood Mrs Laurie, the sun beating down upon her snowy matron-cap, her healthful cheek, her sober household dignity. But the sun revealed to Menie something more than the natural good looks of that familiar face. Mrs Laurie’s cheek was flushed a little. Mrs Laurie’s fine clear dark eye wandered uneasily over the garden, and Mrs Laurie’s foot patted the grass with a considerable impatience. Half angry, disconcerted, abashed, annoyed, Menie’s mother could but half conceal an involuntary smile of amusement, too.

“Yes, my child’s happiness is very dear to me,” said Mrs Laurie, with half a shade of offence in her tone. “But Menie is very young—I am in no haste to part with her.”

“Ah, my dear, youth is the time,” said Miss Annie pathetically—“the first freshness, you know, and that dear, sweet, early susceptibility, of which one might say so many charming things. For my part, I am quite delighted to think that she has given her heart so early, so many experiences are lost otherwise. I remember—ah, I remember!—but really, Mrs Laurie, you surprise me. I see I must give my confidence to Menie. Poor little darling—I am afraid you have not encouraged her to confide all her little romantic distresses to you.”

“I have always respected Menie’s good sense,” said Mrs Laurie hastily. Then she made a somewhat abrupt pause, and then glanced up with her look of disconcertment and confusion, half covered with a smile. “I am Menie’s mother, and an old wife now, Miss Annie. I am afraid I have lost a great deal of that early susceptibility you spoke of—and I scarcely think my daughter would care to find it in me—but we are very good friends for all that.”

And Mrs Laurie’s eye, glistening with mother pride, and quite a different order of sentiment from Miss Annie’s, glanced up involuntarily to Menie’s window. Menie had but time to answer with a shy child’s look of love out of her downcast eyes—for Menie shrank back timidly from the more enthusiastic sympathy with which her grand-aunt waited to overpower her—and disappeared into the quiet of her room, to sit down in a shady corner a little, and wind her maze of thoughts into some good order. The sun was drawing towards the west—it was time to descend to the shady drawing-room of Heathbank, where Randall by-and-by should be received for the first time as Miss Annie Laurie’s guest.

CHAPTER XII.

It is very pleasant here, in the shady drawing-room of Heathbank. Out of doors, these grassy slopes, which Menie Laurie cannot believe to be the heath, are all glowing with sunshine; but within here, the light falls cool and green, the breeze plays through the open window, and golden streaks of sunbeams come in faintly at one end, through the bars of the Venetian blind, upon the pleasant shade, touching it into character and consciousness. It is a long room with a window at either end, a round table in the middle, an open piano in a recess, and pretty bits of feminine-looking furniture straying about in confusion not too studied. The walls are full of gilt frames too, and look bright, though one need not be unnecessarily critical about the scraps of canvass and broad-margined water-colour drawings, which repose quietly within these gilded squares. They are Miss Annie Laurie’s pictures, and Miss Annie Laurie feels herself a connoisseur, and is something proud of them, while it cannot be denied that the frames do excellent service upon the shady drawing-room wall.

Mrs Laurie has found refuge in the corner of a sofa, and, with a very fine picture-book in her hand, escapes from the conversation of Miss Annie, which has been so very much in the style of the picture-book, that Menie’s mother still keeps her flush of abashed annoyance upon her cheek, and Menie herself lingers shyly at the door, half afraid to enter. There is something very formidable to Menie in the enthusiasm and sympathy of her aunt.

“My pretty darling!” said Miss Annie—and Miss Annie lifted her dainty perfumed fingers to tap Menie’s cheeks with playful grace. Menie shrunk back into a corner, blushing and disconcerted, and drooped her head after a shy girlish fashion, quite unable to make any response. “Don’t be afraid, my love,” said the mistress of the house, with a little laugh. “Don’t fear any jesting from me—no, no—I hope I understand better these sensitive youthful feelings—and we shall say nothing on the subject, my dear Menie—not a word—only you must trust me as a friend, you know, and we must wait tea till he comes—ah, till he comes, Menie.”

Poor Menie for the moment could have wished him a thousand miles away; but she only sat down, very suddenly and quietly, on a low seat by the wall, while Miss Annie tripped away to arrange some ornamental matters on the tea-table, where her little china cups already sparkled, and her silver tea-pot shone. Menie took courage to look at her kinswoman’s face as this duty was being performed. Withered and fantastic in its decayed graces, there was yet a something of kindness in the smile. The face had been pretty once in its youthful days—a sad misfortune to it now, for if it were not for this long-departed, dearly remembered beauty, there might have been a natural sunshine in Miss Annie Laurie’s face.

As it was, the wintry light in it played about gaily, and Miss Annie made very undeniable exertions to please her visitors. She told Menie of her own pursuits, as a girl might have done in expectation of a sharer in them; and to Mrs Laurie she gave a sketch of her “society,” the few friends who, Menie thought, made up a very respectable list in point of numbers. Mrs Laurie from her sofa, and Menie on her seat by the wall, looking slightly prim and very quiet in her shy confusion, made brief answers as they could. Their entertainer did not much want their assistance; and by-and-by Menie woke with a great flush to hear the little gate swing open, to discern a lofty figure passing the window, and the sound of a quick step on the gravel path. Randall was at the door.

And Randall, looking very stately, very gracious and deferential, came through the shower of “delighteds” and “most happys” with which Miss Annie saluted him, with a bow of proud grace and much dignity of manner, to Mrs Laurie’s extreme surprise, and Menie’s shy exultation. Another hour passed over very well. The strangers grew familiar with Miss Annie; then by-and-by they strayed out, all of them, into the sweet evening air, so full of charmed distant voices, the hum and breath of far-off life; and Menie found herself, before she was aware, alone, under a sky slowly softening into twilight, in a pretty stretch of sloping turf, where some young birch-trees stood about gracefully, like so many children resting in a game, with Randall Home by her side.

And they had found time for various pieces of talk, quite individual and peculiar to themselves, before Menie lifted her face, with its flush of full unshadowed pleasure, and, glancing up to the other countenance above her, asked, “When is the next book coming, Randall?”

“What next book, May Marion?”

This was his caressing name for her, as May alone was his father’s.

“The next book—our next book,” said Menie. “I do not know much, nor maybe care much, about anybody else’s. Randall—our own—when is it coming?”

“What if it should never come at all?”

Randall drew her fingers through his hand with playful tenderness, half as he might have done with a child.

“Yes—but I know it is to come at all, so that is not my question,” said Menie. “I want to know when—not if. Tell me—for you need not be coy, or think of keeping such a secret from me.”

“Did you never hear that it is dangerous to hurry one work upon another?” was the answer somewhat evasively given. “I am to be prudent this time—there is peril in it.”

“Peril to what?” Menie Laurie looked up with simple eyes into a face where there began to rise some faint mists. Looking into them, she did not comprehend at all these floating vapours, nor the curve of fastidious discontent which they brought to Randall’s lip and brow.

“My simple Menie, you do not know how everything gets shaped into a trade,” said Randall, with a certain condescension. “Peril to reputation, risk of losing what one has gained—that is what we all tremble for in London.”

“Randall!” Menie looked up again with a flush of innocent scorn. He might speak it, indeed, but she knew he could mean nothing like this.

There was a slight pause—it might be of embarrassment—on Randall’s part; certainly he made no effort to break the silence.

“But a great gift was not given for that,” said Menie rapidly, in her unwitting enthusiasm. “People do not have unusual endowments given them to be curbed by such things as that; and you never meant it, Randall; it could not move you.”

But Randall only drew his hand fondly over the fingers he held, and smiled—smiled with pleasure and pride, natural and becoming. He had not been sophisticated out of regard for the warm appreciation and praise of those most dear to him. He might distrust it—might think the colder world a better judge, and the verdict of strangers a safer rule, but in his heart he loved the other still.

But Menie’s thoughts were disturbed, and moved into a sudden ferment. Her hand trembled a little on Randall’s arm; her eyes forsook his face, and cast long glances instead over the bright air before them; and when she spoke her voice was as low as her words were quick and hurried.

“It does not become me to teach you, but, Randall, Randall, you used to think otherwise. Do you mind what you used to say about throwing away the scabbard, putting on the harness—Randall, do you mind?”

“I mind many a delightful hour up on the hillside yonder,” said Randall affectionately, “when my May Marion began to enter into all my dreams and hopes; and I mind about the scabbard and the harness no less,” he continued, laughing, “and how I meditated flashing my sword in the eyes of all the world, like a schoolboy with his first endowment of gunpowder. But one learns to know that the world cares so wonderfully little about one’s sword, Menie; and moreover—you must find out for me the reason why—this same world seems to creep round one’s-self strangely, and by-and-by one begins to feel it more decorous to hide the glitter of the trenchant steel. What a coxcomb you make me,” said Randall, abruptly breaking off with a short laugh; “one would fancy this same weapon of mine was the sword of Wallace wight.”

Menie made no answer, and the discontent on Randall’s face wavered into various shades of scorn,—a strange scorn, such as Menie Laurie had never seen before on any face—scorn half of himself, wholly of the world.

“When I knew I had succeeded,” said Randall at length, with still a tone of condescension in his confidence, “I was a little elated, I confess, Menie, foolish as it seems, and thought of nothing but setting to work again, and producing something worthy to live. Well, that is just the first impulse; by-and-by I came to see what a poor affair this applause was after all, and to think I had better keep what I had, without running the risk of losing my advantage by a less successful stroke. After all, this tide of popularity depends on nothing less than real ‘merit,’ as the critics call it; so I apprehend we will have no new book, Menie; we will be content with what we have gained.”

“If applause is such a poor affair, why be afraid of the chance of losing it?” said Menie; but she added hastily, “I want to know about Johnnie Lithgow, Randall; is it possible that he has come to be a great writer too?”

“If I only knew what you meant by a great writer too,” said Randall, with a smile. “Johnnie Lithgow is quite a popular man, Menie—one of the oracles of the press.”

“Is it a derogation, then, to be a popular man?” said the puzzled Menie; “or is he afraid to risk his fame, like you?”

The lofty head elevated itself slightly. “No. Johnnie Lithgow is not a man for fame,” said Randall, with some pride. “Johnnie does his literary work like any other day’s work; and, indeed, why should he not?”

Menie looked up with a blank look, surprised, and not comprehending. Even the stronger emotions of life, the passions and the anguishes, had never yet taken hold of Menie; still less had the subtle refining, the artificial stoicism of mere mind and intellect, living and feeding on itself; and Menie’s eye followed his slight unconscious gestures with wistful wonderment as Randall went on.

“After all, what does it signify—what does anything of this kind signify? One time or another appreciation comes; and if appreciation never should come, what then? So much as is good will remain. I do not care a straw for applause myself. I rate it at its own value; and that is nothing.”

It began to grow somewhat dark, and Menie drew her shawl closer. “I think it is time to go home,” she said softly; and as she spoke, a vision of the kindly home she had left—of the brave protecting hills, the broad fair country, the sky and atmosphere, all too humble for this self-abstraction, which answered in clouds and tears, in glorious laughter and sunshine, to every daily change—rose up before her; some tears, uncalled for and against her will, stole into Menie’s eyes. With a little awe, in her innocence, she took Randall’s arm again. He must be right, she supposed; and something very grand and superior was in Randall’s indifference—yet somehow the night air crept into Menie’s heart, as she had never felt it do before. Many an hour this soft night air had blown about her uncovered head, and tossed her hair in curls about her cheeks—to-night she felt it cold, she knew not why—to-night she was almost glad to hurry home.

CHAPTER XIII.

“Randall Home is a very superior young man,” said Mrs Laurie, with quiet approbation. “Do you know, Menie, I had begun to have serious thoughts about permitting your engagement so early?—if my only bairn should leave me—leave me, and get estranged into another house and home, with a man that was a stranger in his heart to me. Whisht, Menie—my darling, what makes you cry?”

But Menie could not tell; the night air was still cold at her heart, and she could not keep back these unseasonable tears.

“But I am better pleased to-night than I have been for many a day,” said Mrs Laurie. “I never saw him so kindly, so like what I would desire. I was a little proud of him to-night, if it were for nothing but letting Miss Annie see that we are not all such common folk as she thinks down in the south country—though, I suppose, I should say the north country here. Menie! he will lose my good opinion again if I think he has vexed you. What ails you, bairn? Menie, my dear?”

“I don’t know what it is, mother—no, no, he did not vex me. I suppose I am glad to hear you speak of him so,” said the shy Menie, ashamed of her tears. The mother and daughter were in their own room preparing for rest, and Menie let down her hair over her face, and played with it in her fingers, that there might be no more remark or notice of this unwilling emotion. It was strange—never all her life before had Menie wept for anything indefinite: for childish provocations—for little vexations of early youth—for pity—she had shed bright transitory tears, but she had never “cried for nothing” until now.

“Yes, I am pleased,” said Mrs Laurie, as she tied her muslin cap over her ears: “what did you say, Menie? I thought this coming to London would satisfy me on the one point which is likely to be more important than all others, and I was right. Yes, Menie, lie down, like a good girl; you must be wearied—and lie down with a good heart—you have a fair prospect, as fair as woman could wish. I am quite satisfied myself.”