but that was, of course, only because their portraits had to look at each other across the picture of their mother; because, as it were, of the exigencies of Art. She smiled to herself as she drifted on lazily to what Mrs. Cameron had considered the keystone of the laird's position. It was a dim, dignified room, with a dreadful bed. So large, so square, so evenly surrounded with Macleod tartan hangings that a sleeper immured therein might well on waking lose his airs, and which way he was lying. A bed which might have a dozen ghostly occupants, and the flesh and blood one be none the wiser of those dead and gone lairds of Gleneira. Marjory, oppressed by the very look of it, threw the windows, wide as they would set, to the air and sunshine. Even so, it was a dreary, depressing room, especially to one coming alone, unwelcomed by kindred, to his old home. With a sudden impulse of pity she drew from her belt a bunch of white heather and stag-horn moss which she had gathered that morning, and arranged it neatly in a little empty vase which stood on the wide dressing-table. A poor effort, yet it gave a certain air of expectancy to the room; more appropriate also to the occasion than more elaborate garden flowers would have been, since white heather stood for luck, and the stag-horn moss was the badge of the Macleod clan. A charming little welcome, truly, if the laird had eyes to see! Her face, reflected in the looking-glass as she stood smiling over her task, would, however, have been a more charming welcome still could the laird have seen it. And then the sound of wheels on the loose gravel outside sent her to the window in sudden alarm; but it was only the Manse machine, drawn by the old grey horse, with Father Macdonald on the front seat beside Mr. Wilson, who, as he caught sight of her, stood up with profound bows, disclosing a curly brown Brutus wig. And there was Will lounging at the horse's head, and his mother on the steps with dignified gesticulations. Beyond towards the Strath was the wide panorama of hill and moor and sea, flooded in light. The sudden feeling that it is good to be here, which comes even to untransfigured humanity at times, filled the girl's heart with content as she nodded back to her two devoted old friends who were now both standing up in the dogcart, waving their hats. How good everyone was to her! How happy they all were together in the Glen! And she had never before seemed to realise it so completely.
"Heard I ever the like?" rose in Mrs. Cameron's most imperious tones. "To pass by the house wi' an empty stomach, and it not even a fast! A fast, say I? A feast for Gleneira, and twa glasses o' port wine for Father Macdonald whether he will or no. Marjory, my lass, away with them like good boys to the parlour and cry on Kirsty for the glasses. Will, ye gawk, are there no grooms in Gleneira House that you must be standing there doing their wark. Now, Mr. Wilson, just come you down to terry-firmy, as you would say yourself. You're no golden calf, man, to be put up on a pedestal."
"My dear Madam!" cried he, gaily, clambering down with no small regard to the Graces. "If it is a question of worship, 'tis I who should be at your feet. Facilius crescit quam."
"A cader va chi troppo in alto sale," interrupted Father Macdonald, clambering down on his side. He was a small man with round childish face, possessed of that marvellously delicate yet healthy complexion which one sees in Sisters of Charity; in those, briefly, who take no care for beauty and lead a life of austerity and self-denial. A complexion which a society woman would have given her eyes to possess.
"Hoot away wi' your gifts o' tongues," retorted the old lady, in mock indignation at the perennial jest of strange quotations. "Marjory, just take them ben and stop their mouths wi' cake and wine. And make them drink luck to the auld house that is to be graced wi' its master."
"Ah, my dear Madam," said the incorrigible offender, ambling up the steps, and giving a sly glance at Marjory, "you agree with our friend Cicero, 'Nec, domo dominus sed domino domus honestanda est.'"
Mrs. Cameron treated the remark with silent contempt, and Marjory, leading the way into the morning room where Paul Macleod's portrait hung on the wall, looked back with a kind smile at the two old men who, never having owned chick or child of their own, treated her as a daughter. A sort of dream-daughter, dear yet far removed from the hard realities of every-day familiarity.
"I'm so glad you were passing to-day, father," she said eagerly; "I found a little Neapolitan song among some old music here, and I want you to see if I sing it right."
Mr. Wilson, seated in the armchair, his legs disposed elegantly, straightened his necktie, and made a remark to the effect that the Neapolitans were the most debased Christian population in Europe. And that despite the fact that they lived, as it were, under the very nose of the Pope. An attack which was the result of an ever-green jealousy in regard to the little Jesuit's superior knowledge.
"Neapolitan! Ah! my dear young lady, the patois is almost beyond me. If it had been Roman!" The smooth childlike face grew almost wistful thinking of the days so long ago spent in the still seclusion of the Scotch college, or out in the noisy colour of the Roman streets; a quaint memory for the old man who for fifty years had never seen a town, whose very occupation was passing away from his life, as, one by one, the old adherents to the old faith still lingering among the mountain fastnesses, died and were buried by him.
"Ah! you will manage," said Marjory, cheerfully. "It isn't as if you didn't know the subject, for it is sure to be all about love. Songs always are."
So, while the cake and wine were coming in, she sate down to the piano and sang, guided by the two old men, of love; for Mr. Wilson, great on philology, had his views on the mutations of vowels and consonants, and stood beside the little priest beating time to the phrases with his gold eyeglasses.
Mrs. Cameron found them so, and rallied them on their taste when there was good port-wine on the table.
"My dear Madam," retorted Mr. Wilson, positively shining with delight at his own opportunity of showing that his acquaintance was not confined to dead languages. "We have only put the 'Weib und Gesang' before the 'Wein'; and I am sure anyone who had the privilege of hearing Miss Marjory sing would do the same."
She made him a little mock curtsey, but Mrs. Cameron would none of it, and cut a huge slice of cake. "No! no! minister; from the very beginning o' things men-folks cared more for their stomachs than their hearts. If Eve, poor body, had only given Adam a better dinner he wouldna have been wantin' to eat apples betwixt whiles, and a deal o' trouble might have been saved. But a woman's different. She takes it ill if a man doesn't fall in love with her; she's aye wantin'----"
"I'm sure I don't want anything," put in Marjory, with her head in the air.
"Don't be talkin' havers, child. I tell ye a woman's aye wantin' it. Auld as I am----"
"My dear Madam," expostulated Mr. Wilson.
"Haud your whist, minister," interrupted Mrs. Cameron, tartly; "what will you be knowing o' a woman's heart? I tell you she may be auld and grey, she may hae left half the pleasures o' this world behind her, she may hae been a wife for two score years, and spent her heart's bluid in rearing weans, but what's left o' the heart will be turnin' wi' regret to the time when the auld body who sits on the tither side o' the fire--girding at his food, maybe--was courtin' her. Or, maybe, when some ither auld body that's no at the tither side of the fire was courtin'. There's no sayin'."
There was a silence: and then the old priest said under his breath: "Amor a nullo amato amor perdona."
Mr. Wilson nodded his brown Brutus wig in assent. He did not mind that sort of Italian. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the humanities could understand so much. So they were merry over the cake and wine; merry even over the parting with it in obedience to the minister's Horatian order: "Lusisti satis, editsi satis, alque bibisti, Tempus abire ibe est"--which Mrs. Cameron insisted on having explained to her word by word. It was a complete exposition, she asserted, of the whole duty of man as viewed by men. To eat, to drink, to amuse themselves, and then to run away.
That same
