I mind him, too; ower weel, maybe. A winsome laddie, fond of painting; but 'Thou shalt not make to thyself the likeness,' ye ken. So he is coming home at last--bonnie nae doot; and she, my Jeanie, is dust and ashes."
It was seldom that Peggy alluded to her dead daughter, and there was a wistful look in the crabbed old face. Marjory, quickly responsive, stroked the crabbed old hand which lay on the coverlet gently; but old Peggy would none of her sympathy and drew it away, while her voice took almost a triumphant tone.
"Ay! Dust and ashes! That's what we a' come to. Young and auld, Miss Marjory, my dear, rich and poor. Ay! and pairish officers, forbye; it's no to be escapit, thank the Lord! And if you're going ye might just open yon drawer in the aumry an' tak' oot my deid claes. There's a bonnie blaze in the fire that maun-na be wasted, and in life we are in death, ye ken, so it's as weel to hae them aired. There's a deal o' sickness comin' frae damp linen, and I'm sae subjec' to the rheumatism."
"That would be one of the ills you would leave behind you, Peggy," suggested Marjory, with a tender smile at the oddity of the old woman's thought.
"I'm sure I hope sae, for it wad be maist terrible in the wings," replied Peggy, gravely. Her eyes, following the girl as she complied with the grim request, lit up with satisfaction, her mouth trembled in the effort for calm indifference.
"Ay! sure enough it's the best of cloth, yon, and there is twa rows back stitchin' as fine as fine, and a frill down the front. Some has a lace edgin', but I'm no sure o' furbelows. It wad no be decent for me to come before my Maker prinked oot like a young lass; though Mary McAndrews, who was a gude four year aulder nor me, had real Valenciennes. But, there! she was ae' flighty, puir thing; her mind set on bows and gum flowers, no on things above. Fine cloth an' a cambric frill's gude eneuch for my funeral; an' the coffin no from the pairish, thank the Lord!"
As old Peggy lay there in the bay bed gossiping over her shroud she was a grim sight; yet a pathetic one, since there is nothing in the wide world which appeals to the humanity within us so much as the tired, toil-wasted hands of old age folded on a coverlet waiting for death. Marjory, with her strong young ones straightening the dead clothes, felt a strange thrill at her heart, even as she thought of the long years of welcome struggle before she, too, would be glad of rest.
"So Mr. Paul is to come hame again?" quavered the old voice, softened inexplicably by that chill thought of death. "Aye, aye! he will be bonnie still, for he was aye of the kind to mak' a bonnie corp. And no that bad for a man--not by ordinair. Weel! when ye see him tell him that ould Peggy's gone on the pairish, but that it'll no be a pairish funeral. For there's twa bottles gude whiskey in the draw wi' the deid claes, my dear, and that's eneuch to carry me to my grave as I sou'd be carried."
Will Cameron the grieve, or, in plain English, the land steward of the Gleneira property, was leaning lazily over the shrubbery gate, watching two men mowing a narrow strip of grass on either side of the grand approach leading up to the Big House; a proceeding which gave the whole place a most ridiculous half-shaven air. It had its merits, however, in Mr. Cameron's eyes, seeing that it was supposed to make the roadway look kempt while it preserved the rest of the lawn for hay; an economy sorely needed at the Big House, after the late laird's riotous living. Even now, when matters had mended somewhat, honest Will did not care to think of those times when all he saw of the laird of Gleneira was a signature on I O U's; for, when all was said and done, his own honesty seemed bound up in that of the old place. A gardener was nailing up the creepers covering the porch; the windows of the house were set wide open, and through them a noise of hammering and brushing floated out into the crisp morning air as Marjory came up the road from the lodge; her footsteps crunching in the loose sea-gravel, which not even the coming and going of years had worn into compactness, and leant over the gate likewise. Will shifted a little, almost unconsciously, to make room for her, with loose-limbed easy good-nature, and in so doing revealed the whole attitude of his individuality towards Marjory Carmichael. Briefly she was the dearest girl in the world, but rather apt to make a fellow move on, when he would much rather have stopped where he was. Yet they were the best of friends, almost playmates, although he was double her age and distinctly bald. For the rest a very straightforward simple person, with nothing complex about him. One of those men whom Nature has made firstly a sportsman, secondly a farmer; in other words, a descendant of both Cain and Abel. Marjory herself was very fond of him, and no wonder, since during the years she had spent with his mother he had set himself to make things pleasant for her as a man about a house can do when he has absolutely no ulterior object in view. The mere suggestion of such an object would have filled him with terror, for Marjory's energy was appalling.
"What a pretty place it is after all," she said suddenly, and in so saying spoke the truth. Framed in by an amphitheatre of purple heather-clad hills and dark green fir-clad spurs, Gleneira House with its swelling lawns stretching away to the rocky beach of the loch, its tall silver pines and clumps of rhododendrons looked bright and cheerful despite the nameless want which hangs always round an empty house; the dead look, as if, the soul having passed from it, naught remained save for it to hasten back to the dust whence it came. There was something, however, which struck one as homelike in its low irregular outline, its bow windows set in rose, jasmine, and magnolia; above all in its clustered stacks of chimneys rising without respect to symmetry and suggesting comfortable firesides within. Cosy firesides in corners, not set back to back in pairs after the modern fashion. A conglomerate building altogether, not unlike a two-storied summer-house full of French windows. An airy feminine sort of house, unlike the usual aggressively stony Scotch mansions, yet fitting in strangely with its fairylike background of hills, and woods, and lochs.
"Very pretty, but awfully out of repair," replied Will, disconsolately. "The roof won't last much longer."
"Why doesn't he--Captain Macleod I mean--put on a new one?"
"My dear Marjory! He can't afford it. A man has to spend a lot in an expensive regiment like his, and----"
"Nine years since he was in the Glen," interrupted the girl, bent on her own thoughts. "I don't remember him a bit. What is he like, Will?"
"Awfully handsome; about the handsomest boy I ever saw, and I don't suppose he has changed much."
"I know that--anything more?"
"Spends a heap of money."
"I know--anything more?"
"Yes; you will like him."
"Why?"
"Women always do."
Marjory turned down the corners of her mouth; a trick which with her meant disapproval, disgust, dislike, disappointment,--such a variety of small d's that Will was wont to say it was quite as reprehensible as the collective big one of his sex.
"He really is an awfully nice fellow," continued Will; "but the place is going to rack and ruin. The farm houses are so poor that the south country men won't take them, and a slack style of tenant only means going from bad to worse. He ought to marry money. It is the only way out of the difficulty, since he won't skin the woods or let the place."
"Why doesn't he come and live here as his fathers did," put in the girl, quickly; "why shouldn't he be satisfied to do his duty to the people as his fathers did?"
"Because his income isn't what theirs
