"I am quite sure of it. But you know, dear, you can get good things as well as bad in the London shops, and you can get them fresh and wonderfully cheap. The next time you want a good many things, I wish you would let me go to London for them. I am sure at the Stores and some other places I know, I could make better bargains than you can with your traveller; and I would bring a lot of those dainty novelties that people expect to pay dear for in the provinces. We would make our little shop the talk of the country-side."
"Hoot, havers, lassie!" laughed Rachel, no more entertaining the idea than if Mona had suggested a voyage to the North Pole. "Why, I declare," she added, with a renewal of that agreeable sense of superiority, "you're not like me; you're a born shopkeeper after all! But who else was in?"
Mona drew a long face. "There was aman," she said, with mock solemnity.
"Oh! I wonder who it would be? What like was he?"
"Tall," said Mona, ticking off his various attributes on the fingers of her left hand, "thin, ugly, lanky. In fact,"—she broke off with a laugh,—"in spite of his height, he conveyed a general impression to my mind of what one of our lecturers describes as 'failure to attain the anatomical and physiological ideal.' He was loosely hung together like a cheap clothes-horse, and he wore his garments in much the same fashion that a clothes-horse does." (This, as her customer's tailor could have certified, was most unjust. A vivid recollection of the Sahib was making Mona hypercritical.) "The down of manhood had not settled on his upper lip with what you could call luxuriance; he wore spectacles——"
"Spectacles!" repeated Rachel, alighting with relief on a bit of firm foothold in a stretch of quicksand. "You don't mean—was he agentleman?"
"I suppose so. Yes."
"Oh! I might have gone on guessing for an hour. You said he was aman."
"God made him, and so I was prepared to let him pass for one, as Portia says. Did you think the term was too complimentary?"
Rachel laughed. "Had he on a suit of dark-blue serge?"
"Now you suggest it, I believe he had."
"And had he a pleasant frank-like way with him?"
"Yes."
"It would be Dr Dudley. What was he wanting here?"
"India-rubber."
"Well, I am sure there was plenty of that. I got a boxful years and years ago, and nobody has been asking for it at all lately."
"I should imagine not," thought Mona. "Once bit, twice shy."
"Is he the resident doctor?" she asked.
"Oh no! He does not belong to these parts. He comes from London. When you were going down to the braes, did you notice a big white house with a large garden and a lodge, just at the beginning of the Kirkstoun road?"
"Yes—a fine house."
"His old aunt lives there—Mistress Hamilton. She used to come here just for the summer, and bring a number of visitors with her; but latterly she has stayed here most of the time, unless when she is ordered to some Spa or other. She says no air agrees with her like this. He is her heir. She makes a tremendous work with him; I believe he is the only living thing she cares for in the world. He mostly spends his holidays with her, and whiles, when she's more ailing than usual, he comes down from London on the Friday night, and goes up again on the Sunday night."
"He can't have a very large practice in London, surely, if he can do that."
"He's not rightly practising at all, yet. He has been a doctor for some years, but he is studying for something else. I don't understand it myself. But he is very clever; he gave me some powders that cured my rheumatism in a few days, when Dr Burns had been working away half the winter with lotions and fomentations, and lime-juice, and——"
"——alkalies," thought Mona. "Much more scientific treatment than the empirical use of salicin."
For Mona was young and had never suffered from rheumatism.
"——and bandages and that," concluded Rachel. "It's some time now since I've seen him. His aunt has been away at Strathpeffer all the summer, and the house has been shut up."
"But I have still another customer to account for;" and in some fear and trembling, Mona told the story of the scullery-maid and her bonnet.
"My word!" said Rachel, "you gave yourself a deal of trouble. I don't see that it matters what they wear, and the hats pay better. Young folks will be young, you know, and for my part I don't see why May should go like December."
Mona sighed. "Perhaps I was wrong," she said; "I don't think it is a common fault of mine to be too ready to interfere with other people; but the girl looked so quiet and sensible, in spite of her trumpery clothes. Servants never used to dress like that; but perhaps, like a child, I have been building a little sand-dyke to prevent the tide from coming in."
"What I can't see is, why you should trouble yourself about what they wear. One would think, to hear you talk, that it was a question of honesty or religion like."
Mona sighed again, and then laughed a little bitterly. "No doubt the folks here could instruct me in matters of honesty and religion," she said; "but I did fancy this morning that I could teach that child a thing or two about her bonnet."
"Oh, well, I daresay she'll be in on Monday morning to say she's thought better of it."
There was a long silence, and then Rachel went on, "My dear, how ever did you come by that extraordinary name? I never heard the like of it. They called your mother Margaret, didn't they?"
"Yes, Margaret is my own second name, but I never use it. So long as a name is distinctive, the shorter it is, the better."
"H'm. It would have been a deal wiser-like if you'd left out the Mona. I can't bring it over my tongue at all."
And in fact, as long as Mona lived with her cousin, she was constrained to answer to the appellation of "my dear."
"My dear," said Rachel now, "I don't think I ever heard what church you belong to."
Mona started. "I was brought up in the Church of England," she said.
"Surely your father never belonged to the Church of England?"
"He usually attended the church service out in India with my mother. I don't think he considered himself, strictly speaking, a member of any individual church, although he was a very religious man."
"Ay. I've heard that he wasn't exactly sound."
"I fancy he would be considered absolutely sound now-a-days,—
'For in this windy world,What's up is faith, what's down is heresy.'"
Rachel looked puzzled. "Oh!" she said with sudden comprehension. "No, no, you mustn't say that. Truth is always the same."
"From the point of view of Deity, no doubt; but to us poor 'minnows in the creek' every wave is practically a fresh creation."
"I wish you'd been brought up a Baptist," said Rachel uneasily. "It's all so simple and definite, and there's Scripture for everything we believe. You must have a talk with the minister. He's a grand Gospel preacher, and great at discussions on Baptist principles."
"Dear cousin," said Mona, "five years ago I should have enjoyed nothing better than such a discussion, but it seems to me now that silence is best. The faith we argue about is rarely the faith we live by; and if it is—so much the worse for our lives."
"But how are we to learn any better if we don't talk?"
"Surely it is by silence that we learn the best things. It was from the loneliness of the Mount that Moses brought down the tables of stone."
"I don't see what that has to do with it. There's many a one in the town has been brought round to sound Baptist principles by a sermon, or an argument on the subject. I believe you've no notion, my dear, how the whole Bible, looked at in the right way, points to the fact that the Baptists hold the true doctrine and practice. There's Philip and the Eunuch, and the Paschal Lamb—no, that's the plan of salvation,—and the passage of the Red Sea, and the true meaning of the Greek word translated 'baptise.' We'd a missionary preaching here last Sabbath, and he said he had not the smallest doubt that China, in common with the whole world, would eventually become Baptist. That was how he put it—'eventually become Baptist.'"
'"A consummation devoutly to be wished,' no doubt," said Mona, "but did the missionary point out in what respect the world would be the 'forrader'?"
A moment later she would have given anything to recall the words. They had slipped out almost involuntarily, and besides, she had never lived in a Dissenting circle, and she had no conception how very real Rachel's Baptist principles were to her, nor how she longed to witness the surprise of the "many mighty and many wise," when, contrary to their expectations, they beheld the whole world "eventually become Baptist."
"Forgive me, dear," said Mona. "I did not mean to hurt you, I am only stupid; I don't understand these things."
"To my mind," said Rachel severely, "obedience to the revealed will of God is none the less a duty because our salvation does not actually depend upon it,—though I doubt not some difference will be made, at the last day, between those who saw His will and those who shut their eyes and hardened their hearts. I have a very low opinion of the Church of England myself, and Mr Stuart says the same."
"Have you a Baptist Church here in Borrowness?" asked Mona, thinking it well to change the subject.
"No; though there are a good few Baptists. We walk over to Kirkstoun. I suppose you will be going to sit under Mr Ewing?"
"Who is he?"
"The English Church minister. His chapel is near Mrs Hamilton's house. He has not got the root of the matter in him at all. He's a good deal taken up by the gentry at the Towers; and he raises prize poultry,—queer-like occupation for a minister."
"If it will give you any pleasure," said Mona, with rash catholicity, "I will go to church with you every Sunday morning."
Rachel's rubicund face beamed.
"You will find it very quiet, after the fashionable service you're used to," she said; "but you'll hear the true Word of God there."
"That is saying much," said Mona rather drearily; "but I don't go to a fashionable church in London;" and a pang of genuine home-sickness shot through her heart, as she thought of the dear, barn-like old chapel in Bloomsbury, whither she had gone Sunday after Sunday in search of "beautiful thoughts."
"You tactless brute," she said to herself as she set her candlestick on the dressing-table that evening, "if you have only come here to tread on that good soul's corns, the sooner you tramp back to London the better."
The next morning the sun rose into a cloudless blue sky, and Mona found herself looking forward with pleasure to the walk into Kirkstoun. The road lay along the coast, and was separated from the sea by a stretch of yellow corn-fields. The inland scenery was flat and tame, but, after the massive grandeur of Norway, Mona's eye rested with quiet satisfaction on the smiling acres, cut into squares, like a giant's chess-board, by scraggy hedges and lichen-grown dykes.
They had gone about half-way, when a pleasant voice behind them said, "Good morning, Miss Simpson."
"Oh, good morning, doctor! My dear, this is Dr Dudley."
He lifted his hat and accommodated his long ramshackle stride to Rachel's podgy steps.
"How goes the rheumatism?" he asked.
"It's wonderful, doctor. Whenever I feel a twinge, I get the chemist to make me up some of those powders of yours, and they work like magic."
"That's right. You will give me a testimonial, won't you?"
"That I will, with all my heart. But you are surely forsaking Mr Ewing this morning? What will he say to that?"
"Even so, Miss Simpson. Fortunately, Mr Ewing is not touchy on that score. Your Mr Stuart asked me with charming frankness to come and hear him, so I am taking the first opportunity of accepting his invitation."
"I'm glad to hear it. You will hear a very different sermon to one of Mr Ewing's."
He laughed. "Mr Ewing is not a Chrysostom," he said, "but he is a good fellow and a gentleman, and in that capacity I think he has a distinctly refining influence on his people."
"No doubt, doctor; but don't you think it is better to have the water of life in an earthen vessel——?"
"Ah, yes," he said, with sudden seriousness. "If you give us the water of life, we won't stop to criticise the bowl."
"Well, you wait till you hear Mr Stuart."
An almost imperceptible smile played about his mouth. He glanced at Mona, and found her eyes fixed on his face; but she looked away instantly. She would not be guilty of the disloyalty to Rachel involved in the subtlest voluntary glance of comprehension; but her face was a very eloquent one, and his short-sighted eyes were quick.
"Que diable allait-elle faire dans cette galère?" he thought.
"My dear," said Rachel to Mona, in that mysterious tone invariably assumed by some people when they speak of things sacred, "we always have the Communion after the morning service. Were you meaning to stay?"
"You would not have me, would you?"
"You'd wonder." Rachel raised her voice. "We're very wide. Mr Stuart has got into trouble with several other ministers in the Union for his liberality. He says he will turn away no man who is a converted Christian."
Dr Dudley's eyes sparkled. "I should have thought a converted pagan would be even dearer to Stuart's heart."
"So he would, so he would, doctor. You know what I mean. Mr Stuart says the simple name Christian is not sufficient nowadays, because so many folks who call themselves by that name fight shy of the word 'converted.'"
Again Dr Dudley glanced at Mona, but this time she was on her guard.
"I think it is one of the grandest words I know," she said proudly, looking straight in front of her. "But I think I won't stay to-day, dear, thank you. Shall I wait for you?"
"Please yourself, my dear, please yourself. There's always quite a party of us walks home together."
They had entered the quaint old town, and were greeted by a strong smell of fish and of sea-weed, as they descended a steep angular street to the shore. Here a single row of uneven shops and tenements faced the harbour, alive to-day with the rich tints and picturesque outlines of well-patched canvas sails; and brown-faced, flaxen-haired babies basked on the flags at the mouths of the closes. A solitary gig was rattling over the stones, with a noise and stir quite disproportionate to its size and importance; and the natives, Bible in hand, were quietly discussing the last haul of herring on their way to the kirk.
Rachel led the way up another steep little hill, away from the sea; and they entered the dark, narrow, sunless street, where the chapel stood in well-to-do simplicity, opposite a large and odoriferous tannery.
The interior of the chapel opened up another new corner of the world for Mona. Fresh paint and varnish and crimson cushions gave a general impression of smug respectability, and half the congregation had duly assembled in Sunday attire; the women in well-preserved Paisley shawls and purple bonnet-strings, the little girls in blue ribbons and pink roses, and the boys severely superior in uncompromising, ill-fitting Sabbath suits, with an extra supply of "grease" on their home-cropped hair. Already there was a distinct suspicion of peppermint in the atmosphere, and the hymn-books and Bibles on the book-boards were interspersed with stray marigolds and half-withered sprigs of southernwood.
There was nothing remarkable about either service or sermon. The latter was a fair average specimen of thousands that were being delivered throughout the country at the same moment. Those in sympathy with the preacher would have found something to admire—those out of sympathy, something to smile at; probably there was not a single word that would have surprised or startled any one.
The sun became very hot about noon. The air in the chapel grew closer and closer, the varnish on the pews more and more sticky, and the smell of peppermint stronger every minute. A small boy beside Mona fell asleep immediately after the first hymn; and, but for the constant intervention of Dr Dudley, who sat behind, a well-oiled little head would have fallen on her arm a dozen times in the course of the service. She was thankful that she had not promised to wait for Rachel, and as soon as the benediction had been pronounced, she escaped into the fresh air like an uncaged bird.
She had not walked far before she was overtaken by Dr Dudley.
"Well," he said, "you will be glad to hear that the india-rubber has been doing yeoman service."
Mona bowed without replying. She was annoyed with him for entering into conversation with her in this matter-of-course way. No doubt he thought that a shop-girl would be only too much flattered by his condescension.
But Dudley was thinking more of her face than of her silence. One did not often see a face like that. He had been watching it all through the sermon, and it tempted him to go on.
"Pathetic soul, that," he said.
"Mr Stuart?" asked Mona indifferently.
"Yes. He is quite a study to me when I come down here. He is struggling out of the mire of mediocrity, and he might as well save himself the trouble."
Mona smiled in spite of herself—a quick, appreciative smile—and Dudley hesitated no longer.
"After undergoing agonies of doubt, and profound study—of Joseph Cook—he has decided 'to accept evolution within limits,' as he phrases it. I believe he never enters the pulpit now without an agreeable and galling sense of how he might electrify his congregation if he only chose, and of how his scientific culture is thrown away on a handful of fisher-folk."
Dr Dudley was amused with himself for talking in this strain; but in his present mood he would have discussed the minister with his horse or his dog, had either of them been his sole companion; and besides, he was interested to see how Mona would take his character-sketch. Would she understand his nineteenth-century jargon?
Her answer was intelligent if non-committal.
"He must be a man of sense and of self-repression," she said quietly.
"Well, he does not preach the survival of the fittest and the action of environment, certainly; but that is just where the pathos of it comes in. If he were the man he thinks he is, he would preach those things in spite of himself, and without his people finding it out. The fact is, that in the course of his life he has assimilated two doctrines, and only two,—Justification by Faith—or his own version of the same,—and Baptism by Immersion as a profession of Faith. Anything else that he has acquired, or will acquire, is the merest accretion, and not a part of himself at all."
"In other words, he resembles ninety-nine-hundredths of the human race."
Dudley laughed. "Perhaps," he said. "Poor Stuart! I believe that in every new hearer he sees a possible interesting young sceptic, on whom he longs to try the force of concession. Such a tussle is the Ultima Thule of his ambition."
"It seems a pity that it should not be realised. The interesting young sceptic is a common species enough nowadays, and he rarely has any objection to posing in that capacity."
Dr Dudley had not been studying her for nothing all morning. Her tone jarred on him now, and he looked at her with his quick, keen glance.
"I wonder how long it is——" he said, and then he decided that the remark was quite unwarrantable.
Mona's stiffness thawed in a quiet laugh.
"Since I was an interesting young sceptic myself?" she said. "I suppose I did lay myself open to that. Oh, it is a long, long time! I don't find it easy to build a new Rome on the ashes of one that has been destroyed."
"Don't you!" he said, with quick comprehension. "I think I do, rather. It is such a ghastly sensation to have no Rome.
'Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul—'"
"Go on," said Mona.
"'Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,As the swift seasons roll!Leave thy low-vaulted past.Let each new temple, nobler than the last,Shut thee from heaven by a dome more vast;Till thou at length art free,Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!'"
Then suddenly it flashed on Mona wherein his great charm lay. He had one of the most beautiful voices she had ever heard.
"We might strike down to the beach here," he said, "and go home by the braes. It is ever so much pleasanter."
"Not to-day, I think," said Mona; but what she meant was, "Not with you."
They were deep in conversation when they reached Mrs Hamilton's gate, and he was almost in the act of walking on with her to her own door; but he suddenly remembered who she was, and thought better of it. Not a very noble consideration, perhaps, when looked at from the standpoint of eternity; but even the best of us do not at all times look at life from the standpoint of eternity.
"Who is that young—person, who lives with Miss Simpson?" he asked his aunt as they sat at lunch. He would have said "young lady" but for Mrs Hamilton's well-known prejudices on the subject. "She seems remarkably intelligent."
"She's a niece, I believe. Yes, she's sensible enough. I have not seen them since I came back."
"But you don't mean to say her mother was Miss Simpson's sister?"
"I suppose so. Why not?"
"Why not? Talk of freaks of Nature! This girl seems to be a sort of hidden genius."
"Oh, Ralph, come!" said the old lady, with a twinkle in her eye. "There's plenty of backbiting in Borrowness, and Miss Simpson's niece must expect to come in for her share of it, but I never heardthatsaid of her yet!"
The first fortnight of Mona's stay at Borrowness was drawing to a close, and she was wellnigh prostrated with sheer physical reaction.
"It is certainly my due, after all the pleasant excitement of Norway," she thought; for she would not admit, even to herself, that the strain of settling down to these new conditions of life had taxed her nerves more than medical study and examinations had ever been able to do.
She tried hard to be brave and bright, but even Rachel's unobservant eye could not always fail to notice the contrast between her gaiety of manner and the almost woe-begone expression which her face sometimes wore in repose. Even the welcome arrival of the traveller, with samples of elastic,inter alia, only roused her for a few minutes from the lethargy into which she had fallen. If she could have spent a good deal of her time at Castle Maclean, as she had dubbed the column of rock on the beach, things would have been more bearable; but the weather continued fine, and Rachel insisted on making an interminable round of dreary afternoon calls.
Day after day they put on their "best things," and sallied forth, to sit by the hour in rose-scented parlours and exert themselves to talk about nothing. Even in this, under ordinary circumstances, Mona would have found abundant amusement, but it was not the most appropriate treatment for a profound fit of depression.
"I suppose, if I had eyes to see it, these people are all intensely interesting," she said to herself; "but, heaven help me, I find them as dull as ditch-water!"
This opinion was probably mutual, for Mona's sprightliness of manner had entirely deserted her for the moment. It was all she could do to be tolerably amiable, and to speak when she was spoken to. Some of the people they called upon remembered vaguely that her father had been a great man, and treated her with exaggerated respect in consequence; but to the majority she was simply Rachel Simpson's cousin, a person of very small account in the Borrowness world.
"We have still to go and see Auntie Bell," said Rachel at last; "but we'll wait till Mr Hogg can drive us out in his machine. He is always ready to oblige me."
"Who is Auntie Bell?"
"She's the same relation to me that I am to you; in fact, she's a far-away connection of your own. She's a plain body, taken up with her hens and her dairy,—indeed, for the matter of that, she manages the whole farm."
"A sort of Mrs Poyser?"
"I don't knowher."
"Not know Mrs Poyser? Oh, you must let me read you about her. We shall finish that story in theSunday at Homethis evening, and to-morrow we will begin Mrs Poyser. It's a capital story, and I should dearly like your opinion of it."
Rachel had not much faith in the attractions of any story recommended by Mona; but, if it was about a farmer's wife, it must surely be at least comprehensible, and probably more or less interesting.
The next morning Mona was alone in the shop. Her fairy fingers had wrought a wonderful change in her surroundings, but it seemed to her now in her depression that she might better have let things alone. "Oh, reform it altogether!" she said bitterly. "What's the use of patching—what's the use?"
The shop-bell rang sharply, and Dr Dudley came in. It was a relief to see some one quite different from the people with whom her social intercourse had lain of late.
"Good morning," he said. "How are you?"
"Good morning," said Mona.
She ignored his offered hand, but she was surprised to hear herself answering unconventionally.
"I am bored," she said, "to the last limit of endurance."
He drew down his brows with a frown of sympathy.
"Are you?" he said. "What do you do for it?"
"I do believe he is going to recommend Easton's Syrup!" thought Mona.
"Ah, that's the trouble," she said. "I am not young enough to write a tragedy, so there is nothing for it but to grin and bear it."
"You ought to go out for a regular spin," he said kindly. "There's nothing like that for blowing away the cobwebs."
"I can't to-day, but to-morrow I am going for a twenty-mile walk along the coast"—"botanising," she was about to add, but she thought better of it.
"Don't overdo it," he said. "If you are not in training, twenty miles is too much," and his eye rested admiringly on her figure, as the Sahib's had done only a fortnight before. He was thinking that if his aunt's horse were less fat, and her carriage less heavy, and the world constructed on different principles generally, he would like nothing better than to take this bright young girl for a good rattle across the county.
"I think I am in pretty fair training, thank you. Can I show you anything this morning?" For Mona wished it to be understood that no young man was at liberty to drop into the shop for the sole purpose of gossip.
He sighed. "What have you got that is in the least likely to be of the smallest use to me at any future period of my life?" he felt half inclined to say; but instead, he bought some pens—which he certainly did not want—and showed no sign of going.
"My dear," called Rachel's anxious voice, "come here quick, will you? Sally has cut her finger to the bone!"
"Allow me," said Dr Dudley, taking a neat little surgical case from his pocket. "That is more in my line than yours, I think," and he hastily left the room.
"Isit indeed!" said Mona saucily to herself, drawing the counterpart of his case from her own pocket. "Set you up!"
She was about to follow him, "to hold the forceps," as she said, when the bell rang again, and two red-haired, showily-dressed girls entered the shop. They seemed surprised to see Mona there, and looked at her critically.
"Some blue ribbon," said one of them languidly, with a comical affectation ofhauteur.
Mona laid the box on the counter, and they ran their eyes over the poor little store.
"No, there is nothing there that will do."
Mona bowed, and replaced the box on the shelf.
"You don't mean to say that is all you've got! Why, it is not even fresh. Some of it is half faded."
"Truly," said Mona quietly. "I suppose you will be able to get what you want elsewhere."
"I told you it was no use, Matilda, in a place like this," said the elder of the two, looking contemptuously round the shop. "Pa will be driving us in to St Rules in a day or two. There are some decent shops there."
"What is the use of that when I want it to-night? Just let me see the box again."
She took up the least impossible roll of ribbon and regarded it critically.
"You can't possibly take that, Matilda. Every shop-girl wears that shade."
Matilda nudged her sister violently, and they both strove to prevent a giggle from getting the better of their dignity. Fortunately, when they looked at Mona, she seemed to be quite unconscious of this little by-play. The younger was the first to recover herself.
"I will take two yards of that," she said, trying to make up for her momentary lapse by increased formality, and she threw half-a-sovereign on the counter, without inquiring the price.
Mona had just given her the parcel and the change, when Rachel came in full of obsequious interest, and inquiries about "your pa" and "your ma"; so Mona withdrew to the other side of the shop.
"I see you have got a new assistant, Miss Simpson," said Matilda patronisingly.
"I'm happy to say I have,—a relation of my own, too,—Miss Maclean."
Rachel meant it for an informal introduction, but Mona did not raise her eyes from the wools she was arranging.
"You will be glad to hear that the wound is a very trifling one," said Dr Dudley's pleasant voice a moment later, as he re-entered the shop and walked straight up to Mona. "Good morning." In spite of his previous rebuff, he held out his hand cordially, and, although Mona was somewhat amused, she appreciated the kindness of his motive too warmly to refuse his hand again.
And indeed it was a pleasant hand to take—firm, "live," brotherly, non-aggressive.
But she responded to his salutation with a very audible, "Good morning, sir."
"Damnation!" he said to himself, "the girl is as proud as Lucifer. She might have left the 'sir' alone for once."
From which you will perceive that Dr Dudley had heard something of the conversation which had just taken place, had guessed a little more, and had resolved in a very friendly spirit to play the part of adeus ex machinâ.
He went out of the shop in company with the red-haired girls.
"Do you know that young woman is a relation of Miss Simpson's?" asked one of them.
"I do."
"She might be a duchess from the airs she gives herself," said the other.
Dr Dudley was silent. It would be a gratuitous exaggeration to say that Mona would grace that or any other position, although the contrast she presented to these two girls made him feel strongly inclined to do so; and in any case it was always a mistake to show one's hand.
"Well, you needn't have said that about shop-girls all the same," said Matilda.
"I don't care! It would do her good to be taken down a peg."
"Ah, Miss Cookson," said Dr Dudley, thankfully seizing his opportunity, "don't you think it is dangerous work trying to take people down a peg? It requires such a delicate hand, that I never attempt it myself. One is so very apt to take one's self down instead."
He lifted his hat with a short "Good morning," and strode away in the opposite direction.
"Where were your eyes?" said Rachel, when the customers had left the shop. "Miss Cookson was going to shake hands with you, I believe; and they're the richest people in Borrowness."
"Thank you very much, dear," replied Mona quietly, "but one must draw the line somewhere. If our customers have less manners than Mrs Sanderson's pig, I will serve them to the best of my ability, but I must decline the honour of their personal acquaintance."
This explanation was intended mainly as a quiet snub to Rachel. In the life at Borrowness, nothing tried Mona more sorely than the way in which her cousin truckled to every one whom she considered her social superior; and it was almost unavoidable that Mona herself should be driven to the opposite extreme in her morbid resolution that no one should consider her guilty of the same meanness. "I don't suppose for a moment that those girls would bow to Rachel in the streets of St Rules," she thought. "Why can she not be content to look upon them as customers and nothing more?"
Poor Mona! She was certainly learning something of the seamiest side of the "wide, puzzling subject of compromise." Hitherto she had been responsible for herself alone, and so had lived simply and frankly; but now a thousand petty considerations were forced upon her in spite of herself, because she felt responsible for her cousin too.
"Well, they do say the Cooksons are conceited and stiff," said Rachel, "but they're always pleasant enough to me."
She found considerable satisfaction afterwards, however, in detailing to one of her friends how Mona had taken the bull by the horns, and had attributed the stiffness on which the Cooksons so prided themselves to simple want of manners. She felt as the people did in Hans Andersen's story when the first voice had found courage to say, "But he has got nothing on!" and she never again absolutely grovelled before the Cooksons.
Immediately after breakfast the next morning, Mona slung her vasculum over her shoulder, strapped a business-like spud round her waist, tucked a well-wornHookerunder her arm, and set off at a good brisk pace. Contrary to all expectations, the rain still held off; and, as physical exercise brought the blood to her face, the clouds of her depression rolled away like mountain mists in the sunshine.
She kept to the highroad for the first few miles, and then, when she was well past the haunts of men, struck on to the glorious, undulating, sandy dunes.
Botanising was not very easy work now, for most of the plants were in fruit, and sometimes not even the youngest member of an inflorescence persisted, as a pale stray floret, to proclaim the pedigree of its family. But Mona was no tyro in the work, and her vasculum filled up steadily. Moreover, she was not disposed to quarrel with anything to-day, and when she reached the extreme easterly point of the county, and stood all alone at the water's edge, she felt the same sense of exultation and proprietorship that she had experienced on the wild pack-horse track above the Nærodal.
All at once her eye caught sight of some showy purple blossoms. "Eldorado yo he trovado!" she cried. "I verily believe it is a sea-rocket." She transferred it to her vasculum, and seated herself on a rock for a few minutes' rest. She proceeded to undo her packet of sandwiches, singing to herself all the time, as was her habit when light-hearted and quite alone; but the words that came into her head were not always so appropriate as on the occasion of her first visit to the beach; and at the present moment she was proclaiming with all the emphasis befitting a second encore—
"Fo—r he's going to marry Yum-Yum"—
when a sudden intuition made her look round, and, to her horror, she saw two men regarding her with an amused smile.
One was elderly, ruddy, and commonplace; the other was young, sallow, mournful, and interesting. Both carried vasculums a good deal more battered and weather-beaten than Mona's own.
She coloured up to the roots of her hair, and then made the best of the situation, laughing quietly, and proceeding with her sandwiches the while.
The ruddy man lifted his hat with a friendly bow. "But for the nineteenth-century character of your song," he said, "I should have taken you for the nymph of the coast."
"In a go-ahead county like this," said Mona gravely, returning his bow, "even the nymph of the coast is expected to keep pace with the times."
"True," he said. "I had forgotten where I was. Has the nymph of the coast got anything interesting in her vasculum?"
"Nothing really rare, I fear, though I have found a good deal that is new to me. Oh, by the way, I found a plant of penny-cress in some waste ground near Kilwinnie. Is that common here?"
"Thlaspi arvense?" he said sceptically, looking at his sallow companion.
The younger man shook his head. "I never saw it in the neighbourhood," he said.
"I am quite open to conviction, of course," said Mona. and, rummaging in her vasculum, she produced a bunch of large, flat, green "pennies."
"Right," chuckled the elder man triumphantly—"see that?"
"Y-e-s. It's curious I never saw it before—and near Kilwinnie, too. But it seems all right; it is not likely to be a garden escape."
And they proceeded to compare specimens with much interest and enthusiasm.
"We intended to go on a little farther," said the elderly gentleman at last. "As you are botanising also, perhaps you will join us?"
Mona assented gladly, and they walked together a few miles along the coast, before turning back towards Kilwinnie.
"I suppose you have done no microscopic botany?" said her friend suddenly.
This, from Rachel's point of view, was approaching dangerous ground; but she was never likely to see these men again. They did not look like natives.
"Yes, I have done a little," said Mona. "I have attended a botany class."
"Indeed! May I ask where?"
"In London"—and as he still looked at her enquiringly, "at University College," she added.
"Oh! Then youhavestudied botany! But they did not teach you there to spotThlaspi arvense?"
"No; I taught myself that before I began to study botany. I think it is a pity that that part of the subject is so much ignored."
"But botany, as taught at present, is much more scientific. Old-fashioned botany—especially as taught to ladies—was a happy combination of pedestrianism and glorified stamp-collecting."
"True," said Mona, "and if one had to choose between the old and the new, one would choose the new without a moment's hesitation; but, on the other hand, it does give the enemy occasion to blaspheme, when a man can tell them that a flower is composite, proterandrous, syngenesious, &c., but when he is quite unable to designate it by its simple name of dandelion."
Both the men laughed.
When they reached Kilwinnie, the elder of the two stopped and held out his hand.
"I am sorry we cannot offer to see you home," he said; "but the fact is, dinner is waiting for me now at the inn, and I start for London to-night. If you are ever in town again, my wife and I will be only too pleased to see you," and he handed her his card.
He did not ask her name, for the simple reason that he had already seen it in the beginning of herFlora.
When Mona looked at the card, she found that she had been spending the afternoon with a scientist of European celebrity.
"If redbeard be that," she said, "what must blackbeard be, and why did he not give me his card too?"
She walked on at a good pace, realising only when she saw the lights of Kirkstoun, how dark it had grown. As she passed the post-office, she saw a knot of men assembled at the counter; for, in an unobtrusive way, the Kirkstoun post-office—which was also a flourishing grocer's shop—served many of the purposes of a club. This it did the more effectually as the only female assistant was a wrinkled and spiteful old woman, whose virgin ears could not be injured by any ordinary masculine gossip.
Scarcely had Mona left this rendezvous behind her when she was overtaken by Dr Dudley.
"You are very late," he said simply.
"Yes, but I have had a glorious time."
"You are tired?"
"Healthily tired."
"Cobwebs all gone?"
"Oh yes! In fact, they had begun to go when I saw you yesterday, or I could not have spoken of them."
"Poor little soul!" he thought to himself, wondering how she escaped melancholia in the narrow limits of her life.
"You did not really mind those vulgar girls yesterday," he went on awkwardly, after a pause.
For a moment she could not think what he was referring to.
"Oh no!" she said at last, with wide-open eyes of wonder. "How could I? They don't come into my world at all. Neither their opinion of me, nor their want of manners, can possibly affect me."
"That is certainly the sensible way to look at it."
"I don't know, after all, whether it is the right way. Probably their vulgarity is all on the surface. I believe there are thousands of girls like that who only want some large-souled woman to take them by the hand, and draw out their own womanhood. How can they help it if their life has been barren of ideals?"
He made a mental survey of the women in the neighbourhood, in search of some one capable of performing such a function.
"What a pity it is that they cannot seeyouas you are," he said, looking at the dim outline of her face. "Large-souled women do not grow on every hedge."
"Perhaps it would be more to the purpose if I could see myself as they see me," she answered thoughtfully. "After all, with the honestest intentions, we scan our lives as we do our own poetry, laying stress on the right syllables, and passing lightly over a halting foot. You force me to confess that I said some very ill-natured things about those girls after they were gone; and I had not their excuse of being still in the chrysalis stage. They may make better butterflies than I yet. Even a woman can never tell how a girl is going to turn out."
He laughed. "What is bred in the bone—" he said, "Their mother is my ideal of all that is vulgar and pretentious."
"Poor children!" said Mona.
"And the best of it is," he said, "that she began life as a small——"
He stopped short and the blood rushed over his face.
"Well," said Mona quietly, "as a what?"
"Milliner," he said, kicking a stone violently out of his way, in a tempest of anger at his own stupidity.
"You don't mean to say," said Mona, "that you were afraid of hurting my feelings? Oh, please give me credit for having the soul of a human being!"
He walked with her to her own door that night. It was after dark, to be sure, but I am inclined to think that he might have done the same had it been noonday; and when he got home he asked his aunt no more questions about "Miss Simpson's niece."
"He is curiouslysimpatico," said Mona to herself the next morning. "I don't know that I ever knew any one with whom I felt less necessity for clearing up my fog-beswathed utterances, or for breaking down my brilliant metaphors in milk; it is pleasant to be able to walk straight off into the eternals with somebody; but I like a man to be more of a healthy animal." And a sunshiny memory passed through her mind of the "moral Antiseptic," the dear brotherly Sahib.
"I wonder who the other botanist was?" she went on presently, tumbling her pillows into a more comfortable position. "The Professor's assistant perhaps, or possibly a professor himself. He certainly was a scientist, every inch of him, from his silent tongue to the tips of his ill-groomed fingers."
It would have surprised her not a little if she could have seen the subject of her speculations an hour or so later. He was sitting behind the counter of a draper's shop in Kilwinnie, his head resting on his hand in an attitude of the deepest dejection. Mona was perfectly right when she declared him to be every inch a scientist; he was more so perhaps than even the great Professor himself: but the lines had fallen unto him in a narrow little world, where his studies were looked upon as mere vagaries, on a par with kite-making and bullet-casting; where his college classes at St Rules had to be paid for out of his own carefully saved pocket-money; where his experiments and researches had to be conducted in a tumble-down summer-house at the foot of the old garden; and where, at the age of twenty, he was left an orphan with four grown-up sisters to support.
Had they all lived thirty years later, or in a less secluded part of the world, the sisters would probably have looked out for themselves, and have left their brother to make a great name, or to starve in a garret over his weeds and his beetles, according as the Fates might decree; but such an idea never occurred to any one of the five, although the sisters had all received sufficient instruction in music, painting, and French, to make them rather hard to please in the matter of husbands.
The lad was cut out for patient, laborious, scientific research, and he knew it; but with four sisters on one's hands, and a balance at the bank scarcely large enough to meet doctor's bills and funeral expenses, scientific research seems sadly vague and indefinite, while a well-established drapery business is at least "something to lippen to."
So he laid aside his plans, and took up the yardstick as a mere matter of course, without any posing and protestations even to himself.
He so far asserted himself, that the microscope, thehortus siccus, and the neat pine-wood cabinets, took up a place of honour in the house, instead of skulking in out-of-the-way corners; but now that fifteen years had passed away, although he was known to all the initiated as the greatest living authority on the fauna and flora of the eastern part of the county, he was beginning to pursue his hobby at rarer intervals and in a more dilettante spirit. Now and then when some great scientist came into the neighbourhood, and appealed to him as to the habitat of this and as to the probable extinction of that, when his personal convoy on an expedition was looked upon as an honour and a great piece of luck, when in the course of walks round the coast he drank in the new theories of which the scientific world was talking, he felt some return of the old fire; but in the main, to the great relief of his sisters, he was settling down into a good and useful burgher, with a place on the town council and on sundry local boards, with an excellent prospect of the provostship, and with no time for such frivolities as butterfly-hunting and botanising.
When his acquaintances questioned him, he always stated his conviction that he had chosen, on the whole, the better part; but he never gave any account of hours like the present, in which he loathed the very thought of civic honours and dignity, and in which he painted to himself in glowing colours the life that might have been.
He was thinking much just now of the burly old professor whose visit he had keenly enjoyed; and more even than of the professor he was thinking of Mona Maclean. All things are relative in life. Scores of men had met Mona who had scarcely looked at her a second time. She might be nothing and nobody in the great bright world of London; but into this man's dark and lonely life she had come like a meteor. He could scarcely have told what it was that had fascinated him. It was partly her bright young face, though he dreaded good-looking women; partly her light-hearted song, though he scorned frivolous women; partly her botany, though he laughed at learned women; and partly her frank outspoken manner, though he hated forward women. She bore no smallest resemblance to the mental picture that had sometimes floated vaguely before him of a possible helpmeet for him; and yet, and yet—look where he would, he could see her sitting on that rock, with all the light of the dancing waves in her eyes,—the veritable spirit of the coast as the professor had said. He even found himself trying to hum in a very uncertain bass,
"For he's going to marry Yum-Yum;"
but this was areductio ad absurdum, and with a heavy frown he proceeded to make out some bills.
It never occurred to him to question that she was far out of his reach. Anybody, he thought, could see at a glance that she was a lady, in a different sense from that in which his sisters bore the name. It was right and fitting that the great professor should give her his card, but who was he—the draper of Kilwinnie—that he should suggest another meeting?
But the second meeting was nearer than either he or Mona anticipated.
"We're going to take tea with Auntie Bell this afternoon," said Rachel next day. "Mr Hogg is going in to Kilwinnie on business, and he says if we don't mind waiting half an hour in the town, he will drive us on to Balbirnie. I want to buy a couple of mats at Mr Brown's; you can depend on the quality there better than anywhere here or in Kirkstoun; and we'll just wait in the shop till Mr Hogg is ready."
"But can he spare the time?" asked Mona uneasily. She knew that Rachel could quite well afford to hire a trap now and then.
"Oh, he's always glad to have a crack with Auntie Bell, not to say a taste of her scones and cream. She is a great hand at scones."
This was magnanimous on Rachel's part, for her own scones were tough and heavy, and—though that, of course, she did not know—constituted one of the minor trials of Mona's life.
"But, dear," said Mona, "we are neglecting the shop dreadfully between us."
"Oh, Sally can mind it all right when she's cleaned herself in the afternoon. She is only too glad of a gossip with anybody. It is not as if it was for a constancy like; this is our last call in the meantime. Now the folks will begin to call on us, and some of them will ask us to tea."
Mona tried to smile cordially, but the prospect was not entrancing.
About half-past two, Mr Hogg came round in his "machine." Now "machine," as we all know, is a radical and levelling word, and in this case it was a question of levelling up, not of levelling down, for Mr Hogg's machine was simply a tradesman's cart. It was small, to be sure, and fairly new and fresh, and nicely varnished, but no one could look at it and doubt that it was what Lucy would have called a "common or garden" cart. Rachel and Mona got in with some difficulty, and they started off along the Kirkstoun road. Here they met Dr Dudley. His short-sighted eyes would never have recognised them had not Rachel leaned forward and bowed effusively; then he lifted his hat and passed on.
They rattled through the streets of Kirkstoun, past the post-office, the tannery, the Baptist chapel, and other buildings of importance; and then drove out to Kilwinnie, where Mr Hogg politely deposited them at Mr Brown's door.
Here, then, Mona saw her "professor" measuring out a dress length of lilac print for a waiting servant-girl, and here the draper saw his fairy princess, his spirit of the coast, alighting with as much grace as possible from John Hogg's cart.
Mr Brown knew Rachel Simpson. She stopped occasionally to purchase something from him on her way to Auntie Bell's; his sisters often amused themselves by laughing at her dress, and the traveller told him comical stories about the way in which she kept shop.
For it must be clearly understood that Mr Brown's shop was a very different thing from Rachel Simpson's. It was well stocked with substantial goods, and was patronised by all the people round about who really respected themselves. It was no place for "bargains" in the modern sense of the word. It was a commercial eddy left behind by the tide in days when things were expected to wash and to wear. There was no question here of "locking the door, and letting folks see that you did not require to keep the shop." A place like this must, on the face of it, be the chief aim and end of somebody's existence.
Rachel's descent from the cart was a somewhat tedious process, but at length it was accomplished successfully, and Mr Hogg drove away, promising to return for them in half an hour.
Poor Rachel was not a little flattered by the draper's cordial greeting. Leaving the "young man" to do up the print, he came forward, with stammering, uncertain words indeed, but with a beaming smile and outstretched hand. And he might be Provost next year!
"This is my cousin, Miss Maclean," she said.
Mr Brown looked absolutely petrified.
"I think we have met before," said Mona, not a little surprised herself, taking his offered hand. "This is one of the gentlemen, dear, who helped me with my plants."
"Oh," said Rachel rather blankly.
It had required all her "manners" to keep her from giving Mona a candid opinion of the common weeds which were the sole fruit of a long day's ramble, and Rachel had a very poor opinion of any man who could occupy himself with such trash. But, to be sure, he was a good draper—and he might be Provost next year!
And then he was so very cordial and friendly—that in itself would have covered a multitude of sins. As soon as Rachel had made up her mind about the mats, he hastened up-stairs, and returned with a stammering invitation from his sisters. Would Miss Simpson and her cousin come up to the drawing-room and wait there? When Mona came to know a little more of the Brownménage, she wondered how in the world he had ever succeeded in getting that invitation.
But up-stairs they went, and were graciously received by the sisters. Mr Brown was wildly happy, and utterly unable to show himself to any advantage. He wandered aimlessly about, showing Mona this and that, and striving vainly to utter a single sentence consecutively.
"Can't you have tea?" he said in a stage-whisper to his sister.
"Oh, thank you," interposed Rachel with a somewhat oleaginous smile, "it's very kind, I'm sure, but we're on our way to Mrs Easson's, and we won't spoil our appetites."
"Are you going to be here long?" said the draper to Mona.
"At Borrowness? A few months, I expect."
"Then you'll be doing some more botanising?"
"Oh yes."
"There's some very nice things a little bit farther round the coast than we went the other day. Would you come some time with my sister and me?"
"I should be very glad indeed," said Mona warmly. "It is an immense advantage to go with some one who knows the neighbourhood."
"Well, we will arrange the day—later on," and he sighed; "but it won't do to wait too long now."
At this moment Mr Hogg rattled up to the door, and the draper went down and helped his visitors into the cart.
"Why, I declare he's getting to be quite a lady's man," said Rachel when they were well out of hearing. "I wonder what his sisters would say if he was to get married after all."
Meanwhile the Browns discussed their visitors,
"It's last year's mantle," said Number one, "but the bonnet's new."
"And what a bonnet!" said Number two.
"And she still shows two or three good inches of red wrist between her glove and her sleeve," said Number three, "Nobody would think that girl was her cousin."
"She's not at all pretty," said Number four, "but she's quite ladylike. Do you know what she is, Philip?"
"I don't," he said nervously, "but I fancy she must be a teacher or something of that kind. She has been very well educated."
"Ah, that would account for it," said Number two. "It must be a nice change for her to come and stay with Miss Simpson."
The draper stood at the window counting up his happiness. There was not a snobbish line in his nature, and Mona was not any the less a fairy princess in his eyes because she seemed suddenly to have come within his reach. He knew his sisters did not want him to marry, and he was grateful to them now for having crushed in the bud certain little fancies in the past; but if he once made up his mind,—he laughed to himself as he thought how little their remonstrances would weigh with him. Of course there was a great chance that so bright and so clever a girl might refuse him; but fifteen years of his sisters' influence had not taught him to exaggerate this probability, and in that part of the country there is a strong superstition to the effect that a woman teacher is not likely to refuse what is commonly known as "an honest man's love."
The slanting rays of the afternoon sun were throwing the old farmhouse, with its goodly barns and well-built stacks, into mellow lights and warm brown shadows, when Mr Hogg's pony drew up at the garden-gate. Before they had time to get down, Auntie Bell came out to greet them,—such a queer little woman, bent half double, and peering up at her visitors through her gold spectacles with keen expressive eyes. There was force of character in every line of her face and figure, even in the dowdy cap, the grey wincey gown, and snow-white apron.
"Why, it's Rachel Simpson," she said. "Come awa' ben. Dick'll tak' the powny."
"This is my cousin, Miss Maclean," said Rachel.
"Mona Maclean," corrected the owner of the name.
Auntie Bell gripped her hand and studied her face with as little regard to her feelings as if she had been a horse or a cow, the furrow on her own brow deepening the while.
"Eh, but she's like her faither," she said. "The mooth an' the chin——"
"Yes," said Rachel shortly. The subject of Mona's father was not a congenial one.
"What w'y are ye no' mairrit yet?" continued Auntie Bell severely, still maintaining her grasp of Mona's hand.
"'Advanced women don't marry, sir, she said,'" were the first words that passed through Mona's mind, but she paraphrased them. "We don't marry now," she said. "It's gone out of fashion."
The muscles of Auntie Bell's face relaxed.
"Hoot awa'," she said. "Wait ye till a braw young man comes alang——"
"You will dance at my wedding then, won't you?"
"That will I!" and Auntie Bell executed a momentarypas seulon the spot.
She stopped abruptly and drew down her brows with all her former gravity.
"I hope ye're cliver," she said.
"Thank you. As folks go nowadays, I think I am pretty fair."
"Ye had need be, wi' a faither like yon."
"Ah," said Mona with sudden gravity, "I was not thinking of him. I am not clever as he was."
"Na, na, I was thinkin' that. He was"—this with great emphasis—"as fine a mon as iver I saw."
"But did you know him? I did not know that he was ever in this part of the country."
"Ay was he! He cam' ae day, it may be five-an'-twinty year syne—afore there was ony word o' you, maybe. He was keen to see the hoose whaur his faither was born, and we'd a crack aboot the auld folks, him and me. Rachel Simpson was at Dundee than. My word! ye'd hae thocht I'd been the finest leddy at the Towers. But come awa' ben, an' I'll mask the tea."
"Ye'll find the place in an awfu' disorder," she went on to Rachel as they entered the spotless parlour. "I'm that hadden doon o' the hairvest, I've no' got my back strauchten'd up sin' it commenced;" and she bustled in and out of the kitchen getting the tea.
"You don't let the girls do enough," said Rachel.
"The lassies! Hoot awa'. I canna bide their slatternly w'ys i' the hoose. I'm best pleased when they're oot-bye."
"You havena been to see me for many a long day."
"Me! I've no' been onywhere; I've no' seen onybody. I've no' been to the kirk sin' I canna tell ye whan. What w'y would I? The folk wad a' be lauchin' at daft auld Auntie Bell wi' her bent back. The meenister was here seein' me. He cam' that day o' the awfu' rain, his umberella wrang side oot, an' his face blue wi' the cauld—ye ken what a thin, feckless body he is. 'Come awa', ye puir cratur,' says I, 'come awa' ben tae the fire.' An' he draws himsel' up, an' says he, 'Why say, poor creature?'—like that, ye ken—'why say, poor creature?'" And Auntie Bell clapped her hand on her knee, and laughed at the recollection.
At this moment Mr Hogg and Auntie Bell's husband—a person of no great account—passed the window on their way into the house.
"Come awa' tae yer tea, Mr Hogg. Hoot, Dauvid, awa' an' pit on anither coat. Ye're no' fit tae speak tae the leddies."
David meekly withdrew.
"We were in seeing the Browns," said Rachel complacently. "They were wanting us to stay to tea."
"Ay! I've no' seen them this mony a day."
"How is he getting on, do you know, in the way of business?" asked Mr Hogg.
Auntie Bell brought the palm of her hand emphatically down on the table.
"A' thing i' that shop is guid," she said. "I'm perfectly convinced o' that; but ye can get things a deal cheaper i' the toon nor ye can wi' Maister Brown, an' folks think o' naething but that. I aye deal wi' him mysel'. He haena just a gift for the shop-keepin', but he's been mair wise-like lately, less taen up wi' his butterflies an' things."
Before her visitors had finished tea, Auntie Bell was hard at work, in spite of a mild remonstrance from Rachel, packing a fat duck and some new-laid eggs for them to take home with them. Something of the kind was the invariable termination of Rachel's visits, but she would not have thought it "manners" to accept the basket without a good deal of pressing.
Mr Hogg was beginning to get impatient before the "ladies" rose to go.
"I'll see ye intae the cairt," said Auntie Bell to Mona, when the first farewells had been said, "Rachel'll come whan she gits on her bannet."
As soon as they were in the garden, the old woman laid her hand impressively on Mona's arm.
"Are ye onything weel pit up wi' Rachel?" she whispered.
"Oh yes, indeed."
Auntie Bell shook her head. "It's no' the place for the like o' you," she said, and then further conversation was prevented by Miss Simpson's appearance.
"Well, you'll be in to see us soon," she said.
"Eh, I daursay you'll be here again first."
"Iwill, certainly," said Mona. "I mean to walk out and see you some day."
"Hoot awa', lassie. It's ower far. Ye canna walk frae Borrowness. Tak' the train——"
"Can't I?" laughed Mona, as Mr Hogg drove off.
"Why, why,why," she thought as they trotted down to Kilwinnie, "did not the Fates give me Auntie Bell for my hostess instead of Rachel Simpson?"