silk! If you and Aunt Agatha could have looked forward forty years and seen grandmothers with dresses almost to their knees, dancing, playing tennis, frivolling, hardly recognisable from the eighteen-year-olds, I wonder what you would have thought. Well, who did buy your trousseau? Aunt Agatha?"
"No, she was less sophisticated even than I was. My stand-by was Miss Ayton. My mother trusted her judgment and her taste and asked her help, and Miss Ayton was only too willing to give it; for, spinster of fifty as she was, she loved a marriage. She was one of those delightful women who can be vividly interested in their neighbours' business without ever being a nuisance, and she presided like a stout, benign fairy over my nuptials, getting things done, it seemed, by a wave of her wand."
Mrs. Douglas let her knitting fall on her lap, and lay back in her chair, smiling.
"First I was whisked off to Edinburgh to have some lessons in cooking (I knew absolutely nothing about anything). High-class cooking it was called, I suppose because nearly every recipe called in the most casual way for a dozen of eggs and a bottle of sherry. Not the sort of cooking required for a manse, you will say. … "
Ann looked up from her writing. "Hadn't you—I seem to remember—a cookery book from that class, a fat green book? It stood, for some reason, on the nursery bookshelf, and was a sort of Aladdin's Cave to us children. We pored over it, reading aloud the rich, strange ingredients, and lay on our faces gazing enraptured at the picture of a dinner-table laid for about sixty people, where each napkin was folded in a different way, and pheasants with long tail-feathers sat about in dishes, and brightly tinted jellies and creams and trifles made it blossom like a fairy garden. That picture always made us so hungry that we had to have 'a piece' all round after looking at it. … Why do I connect that cookery book with Communions?"
Mrs. Douglas laughed. "Because at Communion times, when we had strange ministers assisting we had puddings out of that book, at least expurgated editions of them. I have that book in my room now. It is too much a bit of my past for me ever to part with it. It has been with me since the start. At first it was all that stood between me and blank ignorance, and now it is a reminder of the days that seem like a happy dream. Well, the book and the cookery lessons were due to Miss Ayton. Or, was it Mrs. Watts first suggested I should learn cooking? I believe it was. There was never anyone so practical as Mrs. Watts, dear woman. I always regret that she was gone before you grew up, Ann; you would have delighted in her. She was a daughter of the great Dr. Grierson—that mighty preacher and statesman—and she had much of the Grierson charm. Her husband, Dr. Watts, was laird as well as minister, and they didn't live at the Manse, but at their own place, Fennanhopes. It was about the greatest treat we had as children, to be invited to Fennanhopes, and I can't think why we liked it so much, for whenever we arrived Mrs. Watts would say, 'Now, friends,' and in a trice she had us all working hard. Some picked currants, some went to bring in the eggs, some weeded—but we all did something. We wouldn't have done it for anyone else, but we liked to please Mrs. Watts. She kept everybody busy: visitors (the house was always full), village, the whole countryside, and there is no doubt that the state of being pleasantly busy is the best we can attain to in this world. Mrs. Watts was a noted housewife, and servants trained by her were eagerly sought for. I remember going, during one Assembly time in Edinburgh, to a meeting at which Mrs. Watts was to speak. One knew what to expect as a rule—a rather gasped-out, tepid little homily from the wife of one or other well-known divine; but I rather thought Mrs. Watts would be different. I waited with interest, and presently she stepped on to the platform, looking so big and fine and of the open air, spoke for a few minutes in her clear, round voice, and then, looking round the meeting with friendly eyes she said, 'Now, friends, I am going to tell you how to make really good coffee.'"
Ann laughed. "What a dear! I wish I had known her. I can just remember Dr. Watts. It seemed to me, standing somewhere about his knees, that his head must be dangerously near the clouds, and I remember his gentle voice saying to me, 'It will take you a long time to grow as big as I am.' … Yes, and so between Mrs. Watts and Miss Ayton you learned something about cooking. And who chose your trousseau, and all your 'providing'?"
"Miss Ayton, really, but of course my mother was there too, and I was there, though I don't think I was supposed to have an opinion. You would laugh at my things now, but they were considered very handsome—the best that could be had at Kennington & Jenner's."
"What! Was Jenner's in Princes Street in those days?" cried Ann, astonished.
"Dear me, why shouldn't Jenner's have been in Princes Street then? Really, Ann, you talk as if it were before the Flood. I assure you my clothes caused something of a sensation in the countryside."
"I'm sure they did. I knew you had a sealskin coat, for it ended its long and useful existence as capes for Robbie and me. I liked mine, but Robbie wept bitterly, and said only coachmen wore capes. And you had a bonnet, hadn't you? A bonnet at seventeen!"
"A prune-coloured bonnet," said Mrs. Douglas, "high in front, and worn with a prune-coloured silk dress and the sealskin coat. Those were my 'going-away' things. But the dress your father liked best was navy blue, what was called a Princess dress, buttoned straight down with small brass buttons. I had a sort of reefer coat to wear with that, and a hat with a blue veil. And I had a black satin for evenings (no self-respecting bride would have been without a black satin) besides my bridal white satin."
"You must have looked a duck with those little white kid shoes with the big rosettes on the toes and the blue silk laces. I suppose you were married in the house?"
"Oh yes. Church weddings were practically unknown then. I was married in the drawing-room. Do you remember it? Rather a gloomy room, and not often used. The partition between the dining-room and the room next it was taken down, and the luncheon was laid on long tables. People came from Priorsford the day before and cooked and made ready. It had been a terrible storm, and the drifts were piled up high, but I don't think any of the invited guests stayed away, although many of them had long distances to drive. The preparations were very exciting. I remember the great rich cakes from Edinburgh being cut down with a lavish hand, and big, round, thick cakes of shortbread with white sweeties on them, so the guests must have had tea as well as luncheon, and been well warmed and fed. Rather unlike our modern weddings, with a crumb of bridescake and a thimbleful of champagne, followed by a cup of tea and a sandwich. Hare soup, and roasts of all sorts, and creams and trifles galore. I was child enough to enjoy it all."
Ann stopped writing and sat with her fountain-pen poised in her hand, looking into the fire.
"I can just imagine," she said, "how jolly it must have been. The comfortable old house in the village street, all the rooms with blazing fires, and the kitchen with the flagged, uneven floor, hot and simmering with good things cooking, and the snow outside, and the horses stamping in the cold, frosty air, and the guests coming in laughing and talking. And Father so young and tall and blue-eyed, and you such a nice little white and gold bride, blue-eyed, too (no wonder there is such a lamentable lack of variety in the looks of your children; I do admire a family where some are dark, and some fair, and some red-haired—it isn't so dreadfully monotonous), and the bridesmaids in white with scarlet berries, and your little brothers all agape for good things. It must all have been so young and merry. A good send-off to a very happy married life, eh, Mother?"
Mrs. Douglas looked at her daughter without speaking, the tears slowly gathering in her eyes. Ann bent forward and laid her hand on her mother's. "Just say to me as Marget says, 'Oh, lassie, haud yer tongue!' I know that is what you are feeling like. It breaks your heart to look back. There has been so much happiness and such great sorrow; but the sad bits are as precious as the happy bits, and they all help to make the pattern. On the whole a gay pattern, Mother."
"Oh yes, yes. I have had far beyond my deserts. For many years life was almost cloudless, except for the clouds I made with my own foolish fears and forebodings. Why did nobody shake me
