They both laughed. This anti-climax brought them comfortably down to everyday life again, and they talked about pleasant nothings for the rest of the way.
"Look here, Dickinson," said Sir Douglas, when they entered the hotel; "I won't have you walking off with Mona for a whole day together. She is my property. Do you hear?"
"I am sure it was I who discovered her on the hillside,"
Mona held up her finger protestingly.
"Oh, I am Sir Douglas's invention, without a doubt," she said, putting her hand affectionately within her uncle's arm; "you only rediscovered me accidentally. What a pity it is that every great invention cannot speak for itself and give honest men their due!"
The Sahib was very silent as he sat in the smoking-room that evening. He held a newspaper before him, for he did not wish to be disturbed; but he was not reading.
In India he was looked upon almost as a woman-hater, so little did he care for the society of the young girls who came out there; and Mona's "cleverness" and culture, her earnest views of life, and the indefinable charm of manner which reminded him of Lady Munro, had all combined to make his short friendship with her a very genuine pleasure. Already he found himself thinking half-a-dozen times a day, "I wonder what Miss Maclean would say about this," or "I shall ask Miss Maclean her opinion of that;" and yet what a curious girl she was! It was a new experience to him to be told by an attractive young woman that he was a "moral Antiseptic"; and, in short, she puzzled him. Women always are aterra incognitato men, as men are to women, as indeed every individual soul is to every other; but it might have been well for both of them if the Sahib could have read Mona at that moment even as well as she read him. He would have seen that she looked upon him precisely as she looked upon the women who were her friends; that it never occurred to her that he was man, and she woman, and that nothing more was required for the enaction of the time-worn drama; that, although she had taken no school-girl vow against matrimony, the idea of it had never seriously occupied her mind, so full was that mind of other thoughts and plans. He would have seen that the excitement and enthusiasm of adolescence had taken with her the form of an earnest determination to live to some good purpose; and that the thousand tastes and fancies, which had grouped themselves around this central determination, were not allowed seriously to usurp its place for a moment.
But he did not see. He could only infer, and guess, and wonder.
The steamer was fast approaching Newcastle.
They had had some very rough weather, but now the sea was like a mill-pond, and the whole party was sitting on deck under an awning.
"Well, Mona dear," said Lady Munro, "I am sure I don't know how we are to say good-bye to you."
"Don't!" entreated Mona. "You make me feel that I must find words in which to thank you, and indeed I can't!"
Her sensitive lips quivered, and Sir Douglas uttered a sympathetic grunt.
"You really must spend a month with us on the Riviera at Christmas," went on her aunt. "We will take no refusal."
"Do!" said Evelyn, putting her arm round her cousin's waist.
"Thank you very much," and Mona's eyes looked eloquent thanks; "but it is quite out of the question."
"I have put my hand to the plough," she thought, "and I don't mean to look back. Six months it shall be, at the very least."
"And what is a month," growled Sir Douglas, "when we want her altogether! I am afraid I promised that her incomings and outgoings should be without let or hindrance as heretofore—old fool that I was!—but how could I tell how indispensable she was going to make herself?"
"I wish you would not talk so," said Mona. "I have never in all my life been so disgracefully spoilt as during the last fortnight. I should get simply unbearable if I lived with you much longer."
"The fact is," continued Sir Douglas, looking at his wife, "the greatest mistake of our married life has been that Mona did not come to us ten years ago, when your mother died."
"I don't fancy Mona thinks so," said Lady Munro, smiling at her niece.
"No," said Mona, and the slight flush on her cheek showed that her frankness cost her an effort. "It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth. If I had not known hardship sometimes, and loneliness often, I could not have appreciated as I have done the infinite enjoyment of the last fortnight."
"The fact is, you bear the yoke a deal too much," said her uncle. "Bless my soul! you're only a girl yet, and you can only be young once. And now you are going to mope, mope, mope, over your books."
"You know I am going to my cousin in the first instance."
"Yes—for a few weeks, I suppose! By the way, can't you get out of that? I am sure we want you a great deal more than she does."
"Oh no," said Mona hastily. "I can't get out of that even if I wished to."
"If you were cut out for a common drudge, I should not mind," he went on; "but with your gifts—— Do you know, there is nothing to hinder your being a great social success?"
"Oh, indeed there is!" exclaimed Mona. "You have made me very happy, and I have shown my gratitude by forgetting my own existence, and talking a great deal too much. But when my friends want to show me off, and beg me to talk—with the best will in the world, I seem unable to utter a word."
"No wonder, when you live the life of a hermit. But if you gave your mind to it——"
Mona opened her lips to speak, and then thought better of it. There was no need to say that, at the best, social success seemed a poor thing to give one's mind to; attractive enough, no doubt, so long as it was unattained; but when attained, as the sole result of years of effort, nothing but Dead Sea fruit.
Sir Douglas got up and offered her his arm without speaking. They walked up and down the deck together.
"Where are your cigars?" she said. "I am sure you want one."
"I don't," he said irritably. "I want you." But he allowed her to get one out of his case for him nevertheless.
"And now, Mona," he said more amiably, "I want you to tell me all about your money affairs—what you have got, how it is invested, and who looks after it for you."
"You are very kind," she said gratefully; "but please don't suppose I was thinking of money when I talked of hardship. I am quite a Croesus now. I had to be very careful for a year or two, while things were unsettled."
"And why the deuce did not you write to me? What did you suppose you had an uncle for? What is the use of your coming to us now, when you are quite independent and we can do nothing for you?"
Mona pressed his hand affectionately in both of here.
"The use is problematical from your point of view, I confess, but from mine it is infinite. You have made me fancy myself a girl again."
"And what are you but a girl! But come along, I am to hear all about your money."
And they entered into a long and involved discussion.
The Sahib meanwhile was looking on in a mood as nearly approaching ill-humour as was possible to him. If Lady Munro and Mona had both been available, he might have been in some doubt as to which he should converse with; but Sir Douglas had settled the question by monopolising Mona, and she had become proportionately desirable in his eyes. He persuaded himself that he had fifty things to say to her on this the last day of their companionship, and he considered himself much aggrieved. Moreover, Mona seemed to be submitting to a lecture, and the docile, affectionate smile on her face seemed strangely attractive to the neglected man.
Every moment his irritation increased, and when at last—with Newcastle well in sight—Mona left Sir Douglas and began to talk caressingly to her aunt and Evelyn, the Sahib rose abruptly from his chair and strode away.
Mona did not notice that he had gone. She liked him cordially, but, now that the moment of parting had come, her thoughts were fully occupied with her "own people."
"You will let us know of your safe arrival, won't you?" said Lady Munro. "I suppose you will be too busy to write often during the winter, and I am afraid none of us are very great correspondents; but remember, we tryst you for next summer, if not before."
"You can't possibly get beyond Edinburgh to-night," said Sir Douglas, stopping in front of them and looking at his watch.
"I am afraid not," said Mona. "But I am very anxious to go straight through, if possible."
"I do not know why we should not all have gone north together," he continued, turning to his wife. "Cannot we do it still? Your maid can bring your boxes."
"MydearDouglas! Evelyn and I need no end of things before we can start on a round of visits."
He shrugged his shoulders, and threw up his eyes resignedly.
"Mona cannot possibly spend a night in a hotel alone," he said.
"You dear old uncle! You must remember I have not had you to take care of me all my life. But I am all right to-night. If I sleep in Edinburgh, it shall be with a friend."
"What friend? Who is she?"
"She is a grade or two below the rank of a duchess, but I think she will satisfy even you. Doris Colquhoun."
He smiled and nodded. On the whole, he was well satisfied to have a few days at his club, even if everybody was out of town.
"Well, I will at least see you safe into the train," he said.
The Sahib had expected that this duty would fall to him, and it was with the least possible shade of injured dignity that he took Mona's proffered hand.
"I shall often think of our pleasant walks," she said, looking up with the frank, bright smile that made her face beautiful. But he tried in vain to find a suitable answer, and merely bowed over her hand in silence.
"Now remember, my dear girl," said Sir Douglas, as he passed the last of a series of periodicals through the window of the railway carriage, "if you want anything whatever, write to me, or, better still, come. You do not need even to wire unless you want me to meet you at the station. Just get into the first train and walk into our quarters as if they belonged to you. We are rolling stones, but, wherever we are, you will always find a home."
Mona did not answer. Her eyes were brimming over with tears.
The train glided out of the station, and Sir Douglas watched it till it was out of sight. Then he swore roundly at a small newsboy who was somewhat persistent in the offer of his wares, and walked back to the hotel in an execrable temper towards the world in general, and towards his wife and daughter in particular.
Mona was alone in the carriage, but she did not allow herself for one moment the luxury of dwelling on the life she had left behind. She dashed away her tears, and brought all her power of concentration to bear on the heap of magazines at her side. But it was hard work. Visions of sunlight dancing on the rippling fjord, of waterfalls plunging from crag to crag, of mountains looming in solemn stillness, of deep blue columns supporting a sea of ice,—all these lingered on the retina of her mind, as the physical image persists after the eye is shut.
And with them came the faces—of which she must not allow herself to think.
Never, since she was a mere girl, had Mona known any lack of friends,—friends true and devoted; but, in spite of moments of curious impulsiveness, a proud reserve, which was half sensitiveness, had always kept even the irrepressible Lucy more or less at a distance. None of her friends had ever presumed to lay claim to any proprietorship in her, as Sir Douglas now did; and perhaps because it was something so new and strange, his blunt kindness was more welcome than the refinement of tact to her sensitive nature.
It was growing dark when the train drew in to the Waverley Station.
"I want to go to Borrowness," said Mona hastily. "Am I in time for the train?"
"Borrowness," repeated the porter meditatively, for the place was not one of European celebrity. "Well, ma'am, it's touch and go. If you have no luggage you might manage it."
"You will do nothing of the kind," said a quiet voice, and a neatly gloved hand was slipped into Mona's arm. "I never heard anything more absurd."
"Oh, Doris!" exclaimed Mona. "Why did you come? I told you I could only come to you if I missed the last train."
"Was not that the more reason why I should come here for a glimpse of you? I don't get the chance so often. But if you think you are going on with that tired face, and without any dinner, you are much mistaken. Mona, I am surprised—youof all people!"
"If you only knew it," said Mona resignedly, "you are very unkind."
"No, I am not. I will observe your own conditions, and argue about nothing. Your will shall be law; I shall not even refer to your last letter unless you do. If you tell me that you are going to fly to the moon from the top of the Scott Monument, I shall merely wish you a pleasant journey. And indeed, dear, I am quite sure your train had gone."
"Well, let me telegraph to my cousin," said Mona, with a sigh.
Doris Colquhoun was not a little surprised at her easy victory, but in truth her friend was too worn out to argue.
"My own ponies shall take you out," said Doris. "They are something new since you were here, and they are such beauties. Do not laugh when you see my groom. Father hunted him out for me. He is about the size of a pepper-pot."
With a light practised hand she took the reins, the "pepper-pot" touched his hat with infinite solemnity, and they bowled away through the town and out into the suburbs.
"Your pepper-pot is a work of art, without doubt," said Mona, "but I fear he would not be of much use in case of an accident."
"So Father said. But the ponies are very safe, and I don't know what fear is when I am driving. Father is well content to gratify all my whims, so long as I hold my peace about the one that is more than a whim."
Mona did not answer. Just then they entered the avenue of a brightly lighted house; and, with a magnificent sweep, Doris brought the ponies to a standstill in front of the steps.
Mona knew that here she was a very welcome guest, and when she found herself in the familiar dining-room, with the wood-fire crackling in the grate, and father and daughter quietly and unaffectedly enjoying her society, she felt cheered and comforted in spite of herself.
Mr Colquhoun was a shrewd, kind-hearted Scotch solicitor, or, to be more exact, a Writer to the Signet. He was a man of much weight in his own profession, and, in addition to that, he dabbled in art, and firmly believed himself to be a brilliant scientistmanqué. He was a man of a hundred little vanities, but his genuine goodness of heart would have atoned for many more grievous sins. His gentle, strong-willed daughter was the pride of his life. Only once, as she told Mona, had she made a request that he refused to grant, and in her devotion to him she well-nigh forgave him even that.
"Miss Maclean looks as if she would be the better of some sparkling wine," said Mr Colquhoun, and he gave an order to the footman.
Mona smiled and drew a long breath.
"What a relief it is to be with people who know one's little weaknesses!" she said.
"What a relief it is to be with people who know one wine from another!" he replied. "Now Doris drinks my Rœderer dutifully, but in her heart she prefers ginger-pop!"
Doris protested indignantly.
"Now don't pretend that you are a wholesome animal," said her father, looking at her with infinite pride. "You like horses and dogs, that is the one human thing about you. By the way, did you make any sketches in Norway, Miss Maclean?"
"Very few. Norway was too big for me. I did some pretentiousgenrebilderof women in their native dress, and a hut with a goat browsing at the foot of a tree that grew on the roof."
"Both goat and tree being on the roof?"
"Both goat and tree being on the roof. The tree is a very common feature in that situation; the goat was somewhat exceptional."
"So I should think," said Doris. "I should like to see that sketch."
"Oh, when you want to turn an honest penny," said Mr Colquhoun, "I will give you fifty pounds for your sketch-book any day."
"Indeed I am sorely in want of fifty pounds at the present moment," laughed Mona, "and, regarded as a work of art, you might have the book for sixpence. But there is a sort of indecency in selling one's diary."
"It is not as a work of art that I want it," he said candidly, "though there is something of that in it too. It is like your father's college note-books." He laughed at the recollection. "You have a knack of knowing the right thing to sketch, which is rare among men, and unique among women."
"Thank you very much, but I am afraid I never appreciate a compliment at the expense of my sex."
"Then you may accept this one with an easy mind," said Doris. "The hit is not at the sex, but at my pine-forests and waterfalls."
"Oh, pray do not let us get on the subject of Doris's sex," said Mr Colquhoun. "That is our one bone of contention."
"One of a very few," corrected Doris.
"I think they all reduce themselves to that."
"Perhaps," she answered gravely.
"And now I want to know how long you can stay with us, Miss Maclean. You must stay for lunch to-morrow, whatever happens. Some cronies of mine—scientific cronies, you know—are coming to look at a wonderful microscope I have been buying. It cost a pretty penny, I assure you. Professor Murray calls it the hundred-ton gun. We should be glad of the opinion of a lady fresh from one of the greatest physiological laboratories in the world."
A courteous refusal was on Mona's lips, but the description of the microscope sounded suspicious. She had had some experience of Mr Colquhoun's method of purchasing scientific articles, and guessed that he had probably given fifty pounds for a cumbrous antiquated instrument, when he might have got a simpler, more efficient one for ten. She was determined that the "cronies" should not laugh at the simple-hearted old man if she could help it; and if the opinion of a "lady fresh from one of the greatest physiological laboratories in the world" carried any weight, surely even a little perjury would be excusable in such a case.
"I will stay with a great deal of pleasure," she said; "but, whatever happens, I must catch the afternoon train."
When the evening was at an end, the two girls went together to Mona's room, and for a time they gossiped about all sorts of trifles.
"Well, I see you are very tired," said Doris at length. "Goodnight."
Mona did not answer.
"Are you sure you have got everything you want? Let me put that arm-chair under the gas. That's right. Good night."
Still there was no answer.
"Have you fallen asleep already, Mona, or do you not mean to say good night?"
"Oh, you old humbug!" said Mona suddenly, pushing an arm-chair to the other side of the hearth, and putting her friend unceremoniously into it. "Fire away, in heaven's name! Let me hear all you have to say. Now that I have come, I suppose we must thrash the whole thing out. I withdraw all my conditions. Let us have it out and get it over!"
Doris was almost startled at her friend's vehemence.
"Well, of course, you know, Mona," she said hesitatingly, "it was a great disappointment to me."
"My failure? Naturally. I did not find it exactly amusing myself."
"I don't mean that. I do not care a straw about the failure, except in so far as it delays the moment when you can begin to practise. That was the fortune of war. But I do think you are doing a very wrong thing now."
"In what way?"
"Burying your wonderful powers in the petty life of a village."
"Look here, Doris. I mean to give you a fair hearing, though it is too late to change my plans, even if I wished to, which I don't; but suppose we drop my 'wonderful powers'? I fancy that theory is played out."
"All the examiners in the world could not change my opinion on that score. But we will not discuss the point. Taking you as you stand——"
"Five feet five in my stockings——"
"Please do not be frivolous. Taking you as you stand—a woman of education, culture, and refinement——"
"Youth, beauty, and boundless wealth—go on! Word-painting is cheap."
"I thought you were going to give me a fair hearing?"
"So I will, dear. Forgive me!"
"It used to be a favourite theory of yours that 'every man truly lives so long as he acts himself, or in any way makes good the faculties of himself.'"
"So it is still, now that you remind me of it.Après?"
"Oh, Mona, you know all I would say. Are you making good the faculties of yourself? With the most glorious life-work in the world opening before you—work that I would give all I possess to be allowed to share—you deliberately turn aside and waste six precious months among people who do not understand you, and who won't appreciate you one bit."
"I admire the expression 'opening before me,' when the examiners have twice slammed the door in my face. But, as you say, we won't discuss that. You talk as if I were going on a mission to the Hottentots. I am only going to my own people. I do not suppose I am any more superior to my cousin Rachel than the Munros are superior to me."
"Nonsense!"
"At least you will admit that she is my blood-relation. You can't deny that claim."
"I can't deny the relationship, distant though it is, but I do distinctly deny the claim. You know, Mona, we all have what are called 'poor relations.'"
"I suppose many of us have," said Mona meditatively, after a pause. "You will scarcely believe it, but for the last three weeks I have been fancying that my position is unique."
"Of course it is not. We are all in the same boat, more or less. My brother Frank says that, after mature consideration on the subject of so-called poor relations, he has come to the conclusion that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it is better to cut the connection at once and altogether."
Mona raised her eyebrows. "Doris Colquhoun quotes that?"
The colour rose to Doris's face, but she went on—
"Not because of their poverty. I do not need to tell you that. There are people who earn thirty pounds a year by the sweat of their brow whom one is proud to have at one's table. It is because they have different ideas, speak a different language, live in a different world. What can one do at the best? Frank says,—Spend a week in the country with them once a year or so, and invite them to spend a fortnight in town. What is the result? They feel the difference between themselves and you, they don't like it, and they call you 'snob.' Suppose you ignore them altogether? The net result is the same. They call you 'snob.' The question is, Is it worth all the trouble and friction?"
"Doris, Doris," said Mona, "that is the sheerest casuistry. You know no power on earth would tempt you to cut your own poor relations."
"I don't know. The women all happen to be particularly nice. I should not break my heart if I thought I should never see some of the men again."
"All women are particularly nice, according to you; no doubt my cousin Rachel would be included in the number. No, no; tell all that to the marines! I know you too well. And pray don't preach such dangerous doctrine. It would be precisely the people who have risen above their relatives only in the vulgar externals of life who would be most ready to take advantage of it."
"Well, I confess that I always argue the matter with Frank. Personally, I don't see why one cannot be happy and cordial when one meets one's relations, without sacrificing one's self to them as you are doing."
"I don't know that I am sacrificing myself. Perhaps," she added suddenly with a curious smile, "I shall acquire at Borrowness some personal experience in the 'wide, puzzling subject of compromise.'"
"Compromise!" repeated Doris. "Please don't go out of your way for that. The magnificent thing about your life is that there is no occasion for compromise in it. That duty is reserved for people with benighted old fathers. Borrowness is somewhere near St Rules, is it not?"
"Yes," said Mona. "There is only the breadth of the county between them."
"I know some very nice people there. I shall be proud to give you an introduction if you like."
"No, no, no, dear," said Mona quickly. "My friends must be my cousin's friends. Thank you very much all the same."
"But, Mona, at the end of this miserable six months you will go on, won't you?"
Mona frowned. "I have not the vaguest idea what I shall do at the end of the six months," she said.
"You are taking your books with you?"
"Some old classics and German books, nothing more."
"No medical books?"
"Not one."
Doris sighed deeply.
"Don't be so unhappy, dear. I wish with all my heart you could be a doctor yourself."
"Oh, don't talk of that. It is no use. My father never will give his consent. But you know, dear, I am studying by proxy. I am living in your life. You must not fail me."
"You talk as if suffering humanity could scarcely make shift to get along without me."
"And that is what I think, in a sense. Oh, Mona"—she drew a long breath, and her face crimsoned—"it is so difficult to talk of it even to you. A young girl in my Bible-class went into the Infirmary a few weeks ago—only one case among many—and you should have heard what she told me! Of course I know it was only routine treatment. It would have been the same in any hospital; but that does not make it any better. She said she would rather die than go there again. No fate could have been worse."
"Dear Doris! don't you think I know it all? But you must not say no fate could have been worse. The worst fate is moral wrong, and there is no moral wrong where our will is not concerned."
"Wrong!" repeated Doris scornfully. "Moral wrong! Is it nothing then for a girl to lose herbloom?" Her face was burning, and her breath came fast. "Young men," she said, scarcely above a whisper, "and all those students—mere boys! It drives me mad!"
Mona rose and kissed her.
"Dearest," she said, "you are thepreux chevalierof your sex, and I love you for it with all my heart. I feel the force of what you say, though one learns in time to be silent, and not even to think of it more than need be. But indeed, you make yourself more unhappy than you should. Some of the young men of whom you speak so scornfully are truly scientific, and many of them have infinite kindness of heart."
"Don't let us talk of it. I cannot bear it. But oh, Mona, go on with your work—go on!" She kissed her friend almost passionately and left the room.
"There goes," thought Mona, "a woman with a pure passion for an abstract cause—a woman whose shoe-latchets I am not worthy to unloose."
The next afternoon the grey ponies trotted Mona down to Granton.
It was strange to find herself on the deck of a steamer once more; the same experience as that of yesterday, and yet how different! Yesterday she had been the centre of her little circle—admired, flattered, indulged by every one; to-day she was nothing and nobody—a young woman travelling alone. And yesterday, she kept assuring herself, was the anomaly, the exception; to-day was in the ordinary course of things—a fair average sample of life.
It would have been strange if her thoughts had been very bright ones, and a heavy ground-swell on the Forth did not tend to make them any brighter.
"It's a cross-water, ye ken," an old countryman was explaining to a friend. "They say ye might cross the Atlantic, an' no' get onything waur."
The wind was chill and cutting, and it carried with it an easterly haar, that seemed to penetrate to Mona's very marrow. She was thankful when they reached Burntisland, and she found herself ensconced in a dirty, uncomfortable third-class carriage.
"If Borrowness is your destination," Mr Colquhoun had said, "it is not a question of getting there sooner or later; it is a question of never getting there at all;" and so Mona began to think, as the train drew up for an indefinite period at every little station. And yet she was not anxious to hasten her arrival. The journey from Edinburgh to Borrowness was short and simple, compared with that which her mind had to make from the life behind to the life before.
"I have no right to enter upon it in the spirit of a martyr," she said to herself, "even if that would make it any easier. For better or worse it is all my own doing. And I will not dream the time away in prospects and memories. I will take up each day with both hands, and live it with all my might."
The twilight was beginning to gather when at length the guard shouted "Borrowness!" and Mona sprang to her feet and looked out.
It was a quiet, dreary, insignificant wayside station. A few men were lounging about—fisher-folk chiefly—and one woman.
No, that could not be her cousin Rachel.
During her life in London, Mona had often met an elderly lady whose dress was sufficiently eccentric to attract attention even in "blessed Bloomsbury." A short wincey skirt, a severely uncompromising cloth jacket, and a black mushroom hat, had formed a startling contrast to the frivolities in vogue; and, by some curious freak of fancy, a mental picture of this quaint old lady had always flashed into Mona's mind when she thought of her cousin.
But the woman on the platform was not like that. Her face was ruddy and good-natured, and her dress was a hideous caricature of the fashion of the year before. Every picturesque puff and characteristic excrescence was burlesqued to the last point compatible with recognition. Mona might have met fifty such women in the street, and never have noticed their attire; but the hang of that skirt, the showiness of that bonnet, the general want of cut about every garment, as seen in that first momentary glance, were burnt into her recollection for a lifetime.
"No doubt, the woman I used to meet in London was a duchess," she thought a little bitterly, "but this cannot be my cousin Rachel."
She gave an order to the porter, alighted from the carriage, and waited—she scarcely knew for what. She was the only young woman who got out of the train there; so if Rachel Simpson were anywhere in sight, she must soon identify her cousin by a process of exclusion.
And so she did.
But she did it very slowly and deliberately, for Mona was looking rather impressive and alarming in her neat travelling dress, not at all unlike some of the young ladies who came to stay at the Towers.
The train puffed away out of the station, and then the little woman came up with a curious, coy smile on her ruddy face, her head a little on one side, and an ill-gloved hand extended. Mona learned afterwards that this was her cousin's best company manner.
"Miss Maclean?" she said half shyly, half familiarly.
"Yes: I am Mona Maclean. I suppose you are my cousin Rachel?"
They kissed each other, and then there was an awkward silence.
Rachel Simpson was thinking involuntarily, with some satisfaction, that she had seen Mona in a third-class carriage. She herself usually travelled second, and the knowledge of this gave her a grateful and much-needed sense of superiority, as regarded that one particular. She wondered vaguely whether Mona would object to having been seen under such disadvantageous circumstances.
"I suppose my luggage arrived about a fortnight ago?" said Mona, forcing herself to speak heartily. "You were kind enough to say you would give it house-room. What shall I do about this little valise?"
"Oh, the man will bring it to-night. Bill," she said familiarly to the rough-looking porter, "mind and bring that little trunk when ye gang hame."
"Ay," said the man, without touching his cap.
Rachel Simpson was one of the many lower middle-class people in Scotland who talk fairly good English to their equals and superiors, but who, in addressing their inferiors, relapse at once into the vernacular. Mona greatly admired the pure native Scotch, and had looked forward to hearing it spoken; but her cousin's tone and accent, as she addressed this man, jarred on her almost unbearably. Mona was striving hard, too, to blot out a mental picture of Lady Munro, as she stood on the platform at Newcastle, giving an order with queenly graciousness to the obsequious porter.
The two cousins walked home together. The road was very wet with recent rain, and they had to pick their steps in a way that was not conducive to conversation; but they talked eagerly about the weather, the crops, the crossing to Burntisland, and everything else that was most uninteresting. Mona had never mentioned the Munros nor her visit to Norway.
In about five minutes they reached the house, and indeed it was not such a bad little house after all, opening, as it did, on a tiny, well-kept garden. The two windows on the ground-floor had of course been sacrificed to the exigencies of the "shop"; and as they went in, Mona caught a glimpse of some extraordinary hats and bonnets in one window, and of dusty stationery and sundry small wares in the other.
"Marshall & Snelgrove and Parkins & Gotto," she said to herself judicially, "and I suppose Fortnum & Mason, are represented by those two wooden boxes of sweetmeats beside the blotting-books."
As they opened the glass door, the automatic shop-bell rang sharply, and an untidy girl looked out from the kitchen.
"It's you," she said briefly, and disappeared again.
Rachel Simpson would never have dreamt of giving a domestic order in the hearing of a visitor, so she went into the kitchen, and a whispered conversation took place while Mona waited in the passage. The old-fashioned clock ticked loudly, and the air was close and redolent of rose-leaves and mustiness. Evidently open windows were the exception here, not the rule. The house seemed curiously far away from the beach, too, considering how small the town was.
"If I can only catch a glimpse of the sea from my bedroom window," thought Mona, "I shall be happy in a garret."
But it was no garret to which her cousin presently conducted her, nor, alas! did it command a view of the sea. It was a fair-sized room above the kitchen—a room filled up with ugly, old-fashioned furniture—and its window overlooked a wide prospect of cabbage-beds.
"Just come into the front parlour when you get off your things," said Rachel, "and we'll have a cup of tea."
"Thank you," said Mona pleasantly, and she was left alone.
She seated herself absently on a chair, and then sprang suddenly to her feet again.
"Well, you don't suppose you are going to take stock now," she said to herself savagely. "Wash your hands, and be quick about it!"
She took the liberty of opening the window first, however. The upper sash declined to move at all, and the lower one slipped down again as often as she raised it. In vain she looked about the room for something to support it.
"Stay open you shall," she said, "if I put my own head underneath! but I will resort to the Family Bible first," and her eye rested on the substantial volume that surmounted the chest of drawers.
Finally, she rolled her travelling cloak into a tight bundle, and propped up the sash with that.
"A little rain will do you no harm," she said, "and a little air will do this musty hole a vast deal of good."
She looked about for hot water, but there was none, so with a shiver she washed in cold. Then after a glance at the distorting looking-glass, to make sure that her hair was smooth and her expression tolerably amiable, she betook herself to the front parlour.
There was no fire in the grate. There never was a fire in that grate while the white curtains were up, from May to October. Rachel often indulged in the luxury of sitting by the kitchen fire when she was alone on a chilly evening, and had Mona known this she would thankfully have done the same; but Rachel's "manners" were her strong point, and she would have been horrified at the idea of suggesting such a thing to a comparative stranger. When Mona had really settled down, she could afford to be comfortable again, to use the old brown teapot, put away the plated spoons, and keep her Sunday bonnet for Sunday.
In truth the teapot on the table was a wonderful thing, and Rachel glowed with pride as Mona's eye returned to it incessantly; but Mona was only thinking vaguely that she had never before seen one single object—and that not a very big one—which so absolutely succeeded in setting at defiance every canon of common decency in art.
But all at once she thought of Rachel's affectionate letters, and her heart smote her. This woman, with her shop and all her ugly surroundings, her kind heart and her vulgar formalities, seemed to Mona so infinitely pathetic that, tired and overstrained as she was, she bit her lip to keep back a rush of tears.
"Do you know, dear," she said warmly, "it is very kind of you to have me here."
"Oh, I'm only too glad to have you, if you can make yourself happy."
"No fear of that. Give me a day or two to settle down, and I shall be as happy as a king."
"Yes, it does just take a while to get used to new ways and new people; but blood is thicker than water, I say. My niece, now, had settled down wonderfully. She knew all my ways, and we were so suited to each other. She was a great hand at the millinery, too; I suppose that's not much in your line?"
Mona laughed. "I was going to say, like the Irishman, that I did not know, because I had never tried," she said; "but I do trim my own summer hats. I should enjoy it immensely." "And it will go hard with me," she added to herself, "but I shall eclipse those productions in the window."
"I am afraid," said Rachel uneasily, "we could not sell plain things like you had on. It was very nice and useful and that, of course, but they are all for the feathers and flowers here."
"Oh, I should not attempt a hat like mine. It takes genius to do a really simple thing, don't you think so?"
Rachel laughed, uncertain whether to take the remark in jest or earnest. "Well, you know," she said doubtfully, "it is easier to cover a hat up like."
"Very much," agreed Mona.
"And now you must make a good tea, for I am sure you are hungry after the journey. That's ham and eggs in front of you, and this is hot buttered toast,—only plain food, you see. I have made your tea nice and strong; it will do you more good."
"Farewell, sleep!" thought Mona, as she surveyed the prospect before her; and it occurred to her that the sound of champagne, creaming into a shallow glass, was one of the most delightful things on earth. She blushed violently when her cousin said a moment later—
"I suppose you are blue-ribbon? Everybody nearly is now-a-days. It is wonderful how many of the gentry have stopped having wine on their tables. Nobody needs to have it now. The one thing is as genteel as the other, and it makes a great difference to the purse."
"Doesn't it?" said Mona sympathetically, thankful that no answer had been required to the original question. "And after all," she thought, "when I am living a life like that of the cabbages at the back, what do I want with the 'care-breaking luxury'?"
"I hope you don't object to the shop," Rachel went on presently,à proposapparently of the idea of gentility. "I don't really need it now, and it never did very much in the way of business at the best; but I have got used to the people dropping in, and I would miss it. And you knew the ladies, the minister's wife and the doctor's wife like, they come in sometimes and have a cup of tea with me: they don't think me any the less genteel for keeping a shop. But I always tell everybody that it is not that I require to do it. Everybody in Borrowness knows that, and of course it makes a difference."
"The question of 'gentility,'" said Mona, with a comical and saving recollection of Lucy's letter, "seems to me to depend entirely on who does a thing, and the spirit in which it is done, not on the thing itself."
"That is just it. They all know me, you see, and they know I am not really caring about the shop at all. Why, they can see that whiles I lock the door behind me and go away for a whole day together."
Mona bit her lip and did not attempt an answer this time.
It was still early when she excused herself and went to her room. She paced up and down for a time, and then stopped suddenly in front of the looking-glass. It had become a habit with her, in the course of her lonely life, to address her own image as if it were another person.
"It is not that it is terrible," she said gravely; "I almost wish it were; it is just that it is all so deadly commonplace. Oh, Lucy, Iaman abject idiot!" And like the heroines of the good old days, when advanced women were unknown, she threw herself on the great four-post bed and burst into a passion of tears.
The torrent was violent but not prolonged. In a few minutes she threw away her handkerchief and looked scornfully at her swollen face.
"After all," she said philosophically, "I suppose a good howl was the cheapest way of managing the thing in the long-run. That will be the beginning and the end of it.Hörst du wohl?—And if it so please you, Mistress Lucy, I don't regret what I have done one bit, and I would do the same thing to-morrow."
She curtseyed low to the imaginary Lucy, betook herself to bed, and in spite of grief, excitement, and anxiety, in spite of ham and egg, strong tea and hot buttered toast, she slept like a healthy animal till sunrise.
No; it was clear that nothing could be done with her bedroom. That was a case for pure and unmitigated endurance. Mona felt thankful, as she looked round in the morning sunshine, that she had not brought with her any of the pictures and pots and artistic draperies without which young people find it almost impossible to travel nowadays. The heavy cumbrous furniture might possibly have been subdued into insignificance; but any moderately æsthetic colour would have been drowned in the harsh dominant note shrieked out by the old-world wall-paper.
She adhered rigidly to her resolution that last night's "howl" was to be the "beginning and the end of it"; but as she leaned back on the stiff, hard pillows, her hands clasped behind her head, she looked the whole situation fairly in the face. It was not an inviting prospect by any means, but she was still young and enthusiastic, and resolution was strong within her.
"Good workmen do good work in any sphere," she thought, "and bad workmen do bad work in any sphere. It lies with myself. The game is all in my own hands. Heaven help me!"
"I hope you slept well," said her cousin, as she entered the parlour for breakfast.
"I never slept better in my life," said Mona cordially.
"That's right!" and Rachel, who had suffered sundry qualms of doubt in the small hours of the morning, who had even drifted within a measurable distance of the appalling heresy that blood might not always and under all circumstances be thicker than water, was not a little comforted and strengthened in her old belief. It did still require an effort of faith to conceive that she would ever feel as much at her ease with Mona as she had done with her niece: but then, on the other hand, Mona was so very stylish—"quite the lady"; and if she did not prove much of a hand at trimming bonnets, her manner was certainly cut out for "standing behind the counter."
"Were you meaning to go out this forenoon?" asked Rachel.
"I will do whatever you like. I have not made any plans."
"I was thinking it's such a fine day I might go over to Kirkstoun—it's only a mile and a quarter from here. Mrs Smith, a friend of mine there, lost her mother a few weeks ago, and I've never got to see her since. Her husband's cousin was married on my sister Jane, so she won't think it very neighbourly my never going near her."
"How very unpleasant for Jane!" was Mona's first thought. "I hope her husband's cousin was not very heavy;" but aloud she said—
"And you would like me to sit in the shop while you are away? I will, with pleasure. It will be quite amusing."
"No, you don't need to sit in the shop. As like as not nobody will be in; but you never can tell. You can sit at the window in the front parlour, and watch the people passing, and if the bell rings you'll be sure to hear it. If there does anybody come, Sally can tell you the price of anything you don't know."
"Thank you."
"Of course, I might take you with me and lock the door, or leave Sally to mind the shop. I'm sure Mrs Smith would be delighted to see you at any other time, but she being in affliction like——"
"Oh, of course. She would much rather have you to herself. Anybody would under the circumstances."
"That's just it. If the weather keeps up so that we can wear our best things, I'll take you round to call on all my friends next week. There's really no pleasure in it when you've to tuck up your dress and take off your waterproof at every door."
"That is very true," said Mona cordially. "There is no pleasure in wearing pretty things unless one can do it in comfort; and when I don my best bib and tucker, I like to show them to advantage. I am afraid, though," she added, with real regret, "I have not got a dress you will care for much."
"Oh, I daresay you'll do very well. The great thing is to look the lady."
They went on with breakfast in silence, but presently Rachel resumed—
"I daresay you'd like to go out on the braes, or down on the beach this afternoon. Now I wonder if there is any one could go with you? There's Mary Jane Anderson across the way; she's always ready to oblige me, but they've a dressmaker in the house just now."
"Oh, I think we won't trouble Miss Anderson this afternoon, thank you, dear. I love to explore new places for myself, and I will give you all my original impressions when I come in. I can't tell you what a treat it is to me to live by the sea. I am sure I should find it company enough at any time."
"Well, it's a great thing to be easily pleased. My dear"—Rachel hesitated—"if anybody should come in, you won't say anything about your meaning to be a doctor?"
Mona was much amused. "I should never even think of such a thing," she said. "You may depend upon me, cousin Rachel, not to mention the fact to any one so long as I am with you."
They rose from the table, and after a great deal of preparation Rachel set out in her "best things," without fear of rain.
"Mind you make yourself comfortable," she said, reopening the door after she had closed it behind her. "I daresay you'll like the rocking-chair, and you'll find some bound volumes of theSunday at Homein the parlour."
"Thank you," said Mona; "I do like a rocking-chair immensely."
The first thing she did, however, when her cousin was gone, was to get half-a-dozen strong pieces of firewood from Sally, and prop open all the windows in the house. Then she proceeded to make a prolonged and leisurely survey of the shop.
Accustomed as she was to shopping in London, where the large and constant turnover, the regular "clearing sales," and the unremitting competition, combine to keep the goods fresh and modern, where the smallest crease or dust-mark on any article is a sufficient reason for a substantial reduction in its price, she was simply appalled at the crushed, dusty, expensive, old-fashioned goods that formed the greater part of her cousin's stock-in-trade.
"I shudder to think what these things may have cost to begin with," she said, straightening herself up at last with a heavy sigh; "but I should like to see the person who would take the whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, in exchange for a five-pound note!"
She had just come to this conclusion when the shop-bell rang, and an elderly woman came in.
"Good morning," said Mona pleasantly.
The woman stared. She did not wish to be rude, but on the other hand she did not wish to be ridiculous, and such gratuitous civility from a stranger, in the discharge of an everyday matter of business, seemed to her nothing short of that; so she was silent.
"A yard o' penny elastic," she said, when she had sufficiently recovered from her surprise to speak.
Mona bowed, and took down the box from its place on the shelf.
"If ye've no' got onything better than ye had the last time," continued the woman, looking suspiciously at the battered pasteboard box, "I'll no trouble ye. It lookit weel eneuch, but it a' gaed intae bits the meenit it was touched."
Mona examined the contents of the box critically.
"I certainly cannot recommend this," she said. "It's too old. We"—she suppressed a laugh that nearly choked her, as she found the familiar expression on her lips—"we shall be getting some in next week."
"It's twa month sin' I got the last," said the woman severely. "It doesna seem vera business-like tae be sellin' the same stuff yet."
"That is true," said Mona frankly. "It must have been overlooked. I suppose there are other shops in the town where you can get what you want. If not, you can depend on getting it here this day week. Can I show you anything else?" "Not that there is a single thing in the shop I can show with much satisfaction to myself," she added mentally.
The woman frowned.
"I want some knittin'-needles the size o' that," she said, laying a half-finished stocking on the counter.
Mona drew a long breath of relief. Knitting-needles could not go bad like elastic; and if they were rusty, she could rub them up with emery-paper.
She opened the box with considerable satisfaction, but to her dismay she found needles of all sizes mixed up in inextricable confusion, and the bit of notched metal with which she had seen shopkeepers determine the size was missing. She knew this exacting old woman would never allow her to depend on her eye, and she hunted here, there, and everywhere, in vain. She preserved her calmness outwardly, but her forehead was moist with anxiety, when at length, mere by good luck than good guidance, she opened the cash-drawer and found in it the missing gauge. Poor Mona! She experienced the same sense of relief that she had sometimes felt in the anatomy-room, when a nerve, of which she had given up all hope, appeared sound and entire in her dissection.
With some difficulty she found four needles of the same size, and wrapping them neatly in paper, she gave them to her customer. She was proceeding to open the door, but the old woman seemed to have something more to say.
"I aye like to gie my custom to Miss Simpson," she said, "But what like way is this tae manage? And ye seem tae be new tae the business yersel'."
"I am," said Mona, "but I am very willing to learn. If you will have a little patience, you will find that in time I shall improve."
She spoke with absolute sincerity. She had forgotten that her life stretched out beyond the limits of this narrow shop; she felt herself neither more nor less than what she was at the moment—a very inefficient young shopkeeper.
"Weel, there's nae sayin'. I'll be back this day week for that elastic;" and Mona bowed her first customer out.
She stood for a minute or two, with her eyes fixed on the floor, in a brown study.
"Well," she said at last, "if any lady or gentleman thinks that shopkeeping is child's-play, I am prepared to show that lady or gentleman a thing or two!"
She had scarcely seated herself behind the counter, when the bell rang again, and this time the customer appeared to be a servant-girl. In spite of her tawdry dress, Mona took a fancy to her face at once, the more so as it did not seem to bespeak a very critical mind. In fact, it was the customer who was ill at ease on this occasion, and who waited shyly to be spoken to.
"What can I do for you?" asked Mona.
"I want a new haat."
Only for one moment had Mona thoughts of referring her to the nearest clergyman. Then she realised the situation.
"Oh!" she said. This was still a heavy responsibility. "Do you know exactly what you want, or would you like to see what we can suggest?"
"I'd like tae see what ye've got."
"Is the hat for week-days or for Sundays?"
"For the Sabbath. Miss Simpson had some big red roses in the window a while back. I thocht ane or twa o' them wad gang vera weel wi' this feather."
Mona took the small paper parcel in her hand, and gave her attention as completely to its contents as she had ever done to a microscopic section. It had been an ostrich-feather at some period of its existence, but it bore more resemblance to a herring-bone now.
"Yes," she said tentatively. "The feather would have to be done up. But don't you think it is rather a pity to have both flowers and feathers in one hat?"
The girl looked aghast. This was heresy indeed.
"The feather's gey thin by itsel'," she said, "but if it was half covered up wi' the flowers, it'd look more dressed like."
Mona looked at the feather, then at the girl, and then she relapsed into profound meditation.
"Are you a servant?" she asked presently.
"Ay."
"Here in Borrowness?"
"Na; I've come in for the day tae see my mither. I'm scullery-maid at the Towers."
"What a pass things must have come to," thought Mona, "that even a scullery-maid should be allowed to dress like this in a good house!"
"The Towers!" she said aloud. "You have been very lucky to get into such a place. Why, if you do your best to learn all you can, you will be a first-rate cook some day."
The girl beamed.
"You know," Mona went on reflectively, "a really first-class London servant would think it beneath her to wear either feathers or flowers. She would have a neat little bonnet like this"—she picked out one of the few desirable articles in the shop—"and she would have it plainly trimmed with a bit of good ribbon or velvet—so!"
She twisted a piece of velvet round the front of the bonnet and put it on her own head. Surmounting her trim gown, with its spotless collar and cuffs, the bonnet looked very well, and to Mona's great surprise it appealed even to the crude taste of her customer.
"It's gey stylish," said the girl, "an' I suppose it'd come a deal cheaper?"
"No," said Mona. "It would not come any cheaper at the moment, if you get a good straw; but it would last as long as half-a-dozen hats with flowers and feathers. You see, it's like this," she went on, leaning forward on the counter in her earnestness, "you want to look like the ladies at the Towers. Well, it is very natural that you should; we all want to look like the people we admire. The ladies have good things, and plenty of them; but that requires money, and those of us who have not got much money must be content to be like them in one way or the other,—we must either have good things or plenty of things. Acommonservant buys cheap satins, and flowers and laces that look shabby in a week. No one mistakes her for a lady, and she does not look like a good servant. A really first-class maid, as I said before, gets a few good simple things, that wear a long time, and she looks—well—a great deal more like a lady than the other does!"
The girl hesitated. "I daursay I'd get mair guid o' the bannet," she said.
"I am sure you would. But I don't want you to decide in a hurry. Take time to think it over."
"Na, I'll tak' the bannet."
Then ensued a discussion of details, and at last the girl prepared to go.
"And when you are getting a new dress," said Mona, "get one that will go well with the bonnet—a plain dark-blue or black serge. You will never tire of that, and you have no idea how nice you will look in it."
The girl looked admiringly at Mona's own simple gown, and went away smiling.
"If all my customers were like that," thought Mona, "I should be strongly inclined to pitch my tent in Borrowness for the rest of my natural life."
Truly, it never rains but it pours. Scarcely had Mona closed the door on customer Number Two, when customer Number Three appeared, and customer Number Three was a man.
"Good morning," he said courteously.
"Good morning, sir."
"I wonder if you have got such a thing as a really good piece of india-rubber."
Mona took some in from the window, but it was hard and brittle.
"That is of no use," she said, "but I have some more upstairs."
A few months before, in Tottenham Court Road, she had, as Lucy expressed it, "struck a rich vein of india-rubber," pliable, elastic, and neatly bevelled into dainty pieces. Mona had been busy with some fine histological drawings at the time, and had laid in a small stock, a sample of which she now produced.
"I think you will find that quite satisfactory," she said, quietly putting pencil and paper before him.
He tried it.
"Why, I never had such a piece of india-rubber in my life before," he said, looking up in surprise, and their eyes met with one of those rare sympathetic smiles which are sometimes called forth by a common appreciation of even the most trivial things.
"I am taking advantage of a holiday to make some diagrams," he went on, "and, when one is in a hurry, bread is a very poor makeshift for india-rubber."
Diagrams!The word sounded like an old friend. Mona quite longed to know what they were—botanical? anatomical? physiological? She merely assented in a word, however, and with another courteous "Good morning" he went away.
"A nice shopkeeper I make," she said scornfully. "Firstly, I promise to get in new goods without knowing that the proceeding is practicable. Secondly, I undertake to make a bonnet, which will doubtless prove to be entirely beyond my powers. Thirdly, I give an estimate for said bonnet, which won't allow sixpence for the trouble of trimming. Fourthly, I sell a piece of my own india-rubber without so much as a farthing of profit. No, my dear girl, it must be frankly admitted that, on to-day's examination, you have made
The sunlight broke and sparkled on the sea, and all the flowering grasses on the braes were dancing in the wind. Numberless rugged spurs of rock, crossing the strip of sand and shingle, stretched out into the water, and the long trails ofFucusfell and rose with the ebb and flow of every wave.
Mona was half intoxicated with delight. The mid-day dinner had been rather a trial to her. The "silver" was far from bright, and the crystal was far from clear; and although the table-cloth was clean, it might to all intents and purposes have been a sheet, so little pretension did it make to its proper gloss and sheen. It seemed incredible that, within little more than a stone's-throw of the dusty shop and the musty parlour, there should be such a world of freshness, and openness, and beauty. No need for any one to grow petty and narrow-minded here, when a mere "Open Sesame" was sufficient to bring into view this great, glowing, bountiful Nature.
"It is mine, mine, mine," she said to herself. "Nobody in all the world can take it from me." And she sang softly to music of her own—
"'Tis heaven alone that is given away,'Tis only God may be had for the asking."
This stretch of breezy coast meant for her all that the secret passage to theabbé'scell meant for Monte Christo—knowledge, and wisdom, and companionship, and untold treasures.
A little distance off, a great column of rock rose abruptly from the beach, and Mona found to her delight that, with a little easy scrambling, she could reach the summit by means of a rude natural staircase at one side. On the top the rocks were moulded by rain and wave into nooks and hollows, and there was a fairy carpet of small shells and shingle, sea-campions and thrift. In front of her, for leagues and leagues, stretched the rippling, dazzling sea; behind rose the breezy braes; and away to the left the afternoon sun shone on the red roofs, and was flashed back from the museum windows and weather-cocks of Kirkstoun. Mona selected a luxurious arm-chair, and ensconced herself comfortably for the afternoon.
The old clock was striking five when she entered the house.
"I do hope I am not late for tea," she said. "I have had such a lovely time!"
"I see that," said Rachel, smiling involuntarily as her eyes fell on the bright glowing face. "Get off your things, and come away."
"And look, I found a treasure," said Mona re-entering, "some Bloody Cranesbill."
"Eh? Is that what you call it? It's a queer-like name. It's gey common about here. You'll find plenty of it by the roadside among the fields."
"Really? Or do you mean the Meadow Cranesbill? It is very like this, but purpler, and it has two flowers on each stalk instead of one."
As Rachel belonged to that large section of the community which would be wholly at a loss for a reply if asked whether a primrose and a buttercup had four petals or six, she remained discreetly silent.
But, curiously enough, Mona's childlike and unaffected delight in the sea and the flowers set her cousin more nearly at ease than anything had done yet.
"After all," she thought, "it's a great thing for a town-bred girl to stay in the country for a change, and with her own flesh and blood too. She must have been dull enough, poor thing, alone in London."
"When you want to get rid of me for a whole day," said Mona presently, "I mean to go off on a botanising excursion round the coast. I am sure there must be lots of treasures blushing unseen."
"We'll do something better than that," said Rachel, after a moment's hesitation as to whether the occasion were worthy of a trump-card. "Some fine day, if we are spared, we'll take the coach to St Rules, and see all the sights. There's a shop in South Street where we can get pies and lemonade, and we'll have an egg to our tea when we come back."
"I should dearly like to see St Rules," said Mona. "I have heard of the sea-girt castle all my life; and the prospect of an 'egg to my tea' is a great additional attraction. I cannot tell you all the gala memories of childhood that the idea calls up—picnics in pine-woods, and break-neck scrambles, and all sorts of adventures."
She did not add that "pies and lemonade" were not a part of those gala memories; but in truth the idea of lunching "genteelly" with Rachel, on that squalid fare in a shop, depressed her as few hardships could have done.
"What are you in the way of taking to your supper in London?" asked Rachel. "I usually have porridge myself, but it's not everybody that can take them."
"Oh, let us have porridge by all means! I believe the two characteristics by which you can always diagnose a Scotchman are a taste for porridge and a keen appreciation of the bagpipes. I mean to prove worthy of my nationality."
"And do you like them thick or thin?"
"The bagpipes? Oh, the porridge! The question seems to be a momentous one, and unless I leave it to you, I must decide in the dark. I imagine—it would be safer to say thin."
"Well, I always take them thin myself," said Rachel, in a tone of relief; "but some people—you'd wonder!—they like them that thick that a spoon will stand up in the middle! It's curious how tastes differ, but it takes all sorts to make a world, they say."
"Verily," said Mona earnestly. "But now I must tell you about my customers. You have not even asked whether I had any, and I assure you I had a most exciting time."
"Well, I never! Was there anybody in? I was that taken up with Mrs Smith, you see, poor body!"
"Of course. But now you must know in the first place that I had three, whole, live customers," and Mona proceeded to give a pretty full account of the experiences of the morning.
"That would be Mistress Dickson—I ken fine," said Rachel, relapsing in her excitement into the Doric, "a fractious, fault-finding body. I'm sure she may take her custom elsewhere, and welcome, for me. I never heard the like. She aye has an eye to a good bargain, and if I say I make sixpence profit out of her in a twelvemonth, it's more likely above the mark than below it."
"That I can quite believe," said Mona; "but you know, dear, the elastic had perished, and she was quite right to complain of that. We must get some fresh in the course of the week."
"Hoot awa! We'll do nothing of the sort. If the traveller comes round between this and then, we'll take some off him, but I'll not stir a foot to oblige old Betsy Dickson. She knows quite well that I don't need to keep the shop."
"But, dear,"—Mona seated herself on a stool at her cousin's feet, and laid her white hand on the wrinkled red one,—"I don't see that requiring to keep the shop has anything to do with it. If we keep it at all, surely we ought to keep it really well."
"And who says I don't keep it well? Nobody heeds old Betsy and her grumbling. Everything I buy is the best of its kind; not the tawdry stuff you get in the London shops, that's only got up to sell. You don't know a good tape and stay-lace when you see them, or I wouldn't need to tell you that."