B. “Certainly, miss, he shall have the best in the ‘ouse, you can depend upon that.”
He. “Don’t let me interfere with your usual arrangements. I am not hungry—for food; I shall do very well until I get back to the hotel.”
I. “Indeed you will not, sir! Billy shall pull some tomatoes and lettuce, Tommy shall milk the cow, and Mrs. Bobby shall make you a savory omelet that Delmonico might envy. Hark! Is that our fowl cackling? It is,—at half-past six! She heard me mention omelet and she must be calling, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’”
But all that is many days ago, and there are no more experiences to relate at present. We are making history very fast, Willie Beresford and I, but much of it is sacred history, and so I cannot chronicle it for any one’s amusement.
Mrs. Beresford is here, or at least she is in Great Belvern, a few miles distant. I am not painting, these latter days. I have turned the artist side of my nature to the wall just for a bit, and the woman side is having full play. I do not know what the world will think about it, if it stops to think at all, but I feel as if I were ‘right side out’ for the first time in my life; and when I take up my brushes again, I shall have a new world within from which to paint,—yes, and a new world without.
Good-bye, dear Belvern! Autumn and winter may come into my life, but whenever I think of you it will be summer-time in my heart. I shall hear the tinkle of the belled sheep on the hillsides; inhale the fragrance of the flowering vine that climbed in at my cottage window; relive in memory the days when Love and I first walked together, hand in hand. Dear days of happy idleness; of dreaming dreams and seeing visions; of morning walks over the hills; of ‘bread-and-cheese and kisses’ at noon, with kind Mrs. Bobby hovering like a plump guardian angel over the simple feast; afternoon tea under the friendly shades of the yew-tree, and parting at the wicket-gate. I can see him pass the clock-tower, the little greengrocer shop, the old stocks, the green pump; then he is at the turn of the road where the stone wall and the hawthorn hedge will presently hide him from my view. I fly up to my window, push back the vines, catch his last wave of the hand. I would call him back, if I dared; but it would be no easier to let him go the second time, and there is always to-morrow. Thank God for to-morrow! And if there should be no to-morrow? Then thank God for to-day! And so good-bye again, dear Belvern! It was in the lap of your lovely hills that Penelope first knew das irdische Gluck; that she first loved, first lived; forgot how to be artist, in remembering how to be woman.
PENELOPE'S EXPERIENCES IN SCOTLAND
II. Edina, Scotia’s Darling Seat
III. A Vision in Princes Street
VI. Edinburgh Society, Past and Present
VII. Francesca Meets Th’ Unconquer’d Scot
VIII. ‘What Made Th’ Assembly Shine?’
IX. Omnia Presbyteria Est Divisa in Partes Tres
X. Mrs. M’collop as a Sermon-Taster
XIV. The Wee Theekit Hoosie in the Loaning
XV. Jane Grieve and Her Grievances
XVI. The Path That Led to Crummylowe
XVII. Playing Sir Patrick Spens
XVIII. Paris Comes to Pettybaw
XXII. Francesca Entertains the Green-Eyed Monster
XXIII. Ballad Revels at Rowardennan
XXIV. Old Songs and Modern Instances
XXVI. ‘Scotland’s Burning! Look Out!’
XXVII. Three Magpies and a Marriage
To G.C.R.
Chapter I.
A Triangular Alliance
‘Edina, Scotia’s Darling seat!
All hail thy palaces and towers!’
Edinburgh, April 189-.
