just think at your work, and haud your ill tongue before the young lady,” cried his wife in high wrath. But she, too, added as he swung away with a big laugh: “Onyway, by your ain comparison, we’re at the head and you’re at the tail. Come away, Miss Lily, and see the bonnie doos. There is nae ill speaking among them. I’m no so sure,” she added, however, when out of hearing of her husband, “I’ve heard yon muckle cushat, the one with the grand ruff about his neck, swearin’ at his bonnie wifie, or else I’m sair mista’en. It’s just in the nature o’ the men-kind. They like ye weel enough, but they maun aye be gibing at ye, and jeerin’ at ye—but, bless me, a bit young thing like you, it’s no to be expeckit ye could understand.”
The pigeons were very tame, and alighted not only on Katrin’s capacious shoulders, who “shoo’d” them off, but on Lily’s, who liked the sentiment, and to find herself so familiarly accosted by creatures so highly elevated above mere cocks and hens—“the bonnie creatures,” as Katrin said, who sidl’d and bridl’d about her, with mincing steps and graceful movements. “The doocot” was an old gray tower, standing apart from the barnyard, in a small field, the traditional appendage of every old Scotch house of any importance. To come upon Rory afterward, dragging after him the boy, by name Sandy, and not unlike, either in complexion or shape, to the superior animal whom he was supposed to be taking out for exercise, brought back, if not the former discussion on the prevalence of evil, at least a practical instance of “the deevil” that was in the pony, and was an additional amusement. Lily made instant trial of the feminine ministrations which had been so effective with the cow, whispering in Rory’s ear, and stroking his impatient nose, without, however, any marked effect.
“He’ll soon get used to ye,” Katrin said consolingly, “and then you’ll can ride him down to the town, and make your bit visits, and get any thing that strikes your fancy at the shop. Oh, you’ll find there’s plenty to divert ye, my bonnie leddy, when once ye are settled down.”
Would it be so? Lily felt, in the courage of the morning, that it might be possible. She resolved to be good, as a child resolves; there should be no silly despair, no brooding nor making the worst of things. She would interest herself in the beasts and the birds, in Rory, the pony, and Crummie, the cow. She would always have something to do. Her little school accomplishment of drawing, in which she had made some progress according to the drawing-master, she would take that up again. The kind of drawing Lily had learned consisted in little more than copying other drawings; but that, when it had been carefully done, had been thought a great deal of at school. And then there was the fine fancy-work which had been taught her—the wonderful things in Berlin wool, which was adapted to so many purposes, and occupied so large a share of feminine lives. Miss Martineau, that strong-minded politician and philosopher, amused her leisure with it, and why should not Lily? But Berlin patterns, and all the beautiful shades of the wool, could not, alas! be had on Dalrugas moor. Lily decided bravely that she would knit stockings at least, and that practice would soon overcome that difficulty about turning the heel which had damped her early efforts. She would knit warm stockings for Sir Robert—warm and soft as he liked them—ribbed so as to cling close to his handsome old leg, and show its proportions, and so, perhaps, touch his heart. And then there would, no doubt, turn up, from time to time, something to do for the poor folk. Surely, surely there would be employment enough to “keep her heart.” Then she would go to Kinloch-Rugas and see “Miss Eelen,” Helen Blythe, the minister’s daughter, whom she remembered well, with the admiration of a little girl for one much older than herself. Here was something that would interest her and occupy her mind, and prevent her from thinking. And then there were the old books in the library, in which she feared there would be little amusement, but probably a great many good books that she had not read, and what a fine opportunity for her to improve her mind! Her present circumstances were quite usual features in the novels before the age of Sir Walter: a residence in an old castle or other lonely house, where a persecuted heroine had the best of reading, and emerged quite an accomplished woman, was the commonest situation. She said to herself that there would be plenty to do, that she would not leave a moment without employment, that her life would be too busy and too full to leave any time for gazing out at that window, watching the little bit of road, and looking, looking for some one who never came. Having drawn up this useful programme, and decided how she was to spend every day, Lily, poor Lily, all alone—even Beenie having gone down stairs for a long talk with Katrin—seated herself, quite unconsciously, at the window, and gazed and gazed, without intermission, at the little corner of the road that climbed the brae, and across the long level of the unbroken moor.
CHAPTER VIII
The days that succeeded were very much like this first day. In the morning Lily went out “among the beasts,” and visited, with all the interest she could manage to excite in herself, the byre and the stable, the ponies and the cows. She persuaded herself into a certain amusement in contrasting the very different characters of Rory, the spoiled and superior, with that little sturdy performer of duty without vagary, who had not even a name to bless himself with, but was to all and sundry the black powny and no more. Poor little black powny, he supported Rory’s airs without a word; he gave in to the fact that he was the servant and his stable companion the gentleman. He went to the moor for peat, and to the howe for potatoes, and to the town for whatever was wanted, without so much as a toss of his shaggy head. Nothing tired the black powny, any more than any thing ever tired the “buoy” who drove and fed and groomed him, as much grooming as he ever had. Sandy was the “buoy,” just as his charge was the black powny. They went everywhere together, lived together, it was thought even slept together; and though the “buoy” in reality occupied the room above the stable, which was entered by a ladder—the loft, in common parlance—the two shaggy creatures were as one. All these particulars Lily learned, and tried to find a little fun, a little diversion in them. But it was a thin vein and soon exhausted, at least by her preoccupied mind.
The post came seldom to this place at the end of the world. It never indeed came at all. When there were other errands to do in the village, the buoy and the black powny called at the post-office to ask for letters—when they remembered; but very often Sandy did not mind, i. e., recollect, to do this, and it did not matter much. Sir Robert, indeed, had made known his will that there were to be no letters, and correspondence was sluggish in those days. Lily had not bowed her spirit to the point of promising that she would not write to whomsoever she pleased, but she was too proud to be the first to do so, and, save a few girl epistles for which, poor child, she did not care, and which secured her only a succession of disappointments, nothing came to lighten her solitude. No, she would not write first, she would not tell him her address. He could soon find that out if he wanted to find it. Sir Robert Ramsay was not nobody, that there should be any trouble in finding out where his house was, however far off it might be. Poor Lily, when she said this to herself, did not really entertain a doubt that Ronald would manage to write to her. But he did not do so. The post came in at intervals, the powny and the boy went to the town, and minded or did not mind to call for the letters: but what did it matter when no letters ever came? Ah, one from Sir Robert, hoping she found the air of the moor beneficial; one from a light-hearted school-fellow, narrating all the dances there had been since Lily went away, and the last new fashion, and how like Alice Scott it was to be the first to appear in it. But no more. This foolish little epistle, at first dashed on the ground in her disappointment, Lily went over again, through every line, to see whether somewhere in a corner there did not lurk the name which she was sick with longing to see. It might so easily have been here: “I danced with Ronald Lumsden and he was telling me,” or, “Ronald Lumsden called and was asking about you.” Such a crumb of refreshment as that Lily would have been glad of; but it never came.
Yet she struggled bravely to keep up her heart. One of those early days, after sundry attempts on the moor, where she gradually vanquished him, Lily rode Rory into Kinloch-Rugas with only a few controversies on the way. She was light and she was quiet, making no clattering at his heels as the gig did, and by degrees Rory habituated himself to the light burden and the moderate amount of control which she exercised over him. It amused him after a while to see the whisk of her habit, which proved to be no unknown
