“Oh, mem, we’ll manage fine,” said Bauby, in her soft, round, good-humoured voice.
“Miss Barbara,” said Rolls, “I’m no braggart; but I’ve seen a thing or two in my life. And Bauby, she has far more in her than appears. She’s just a confused creature in speech; but pit her to her goblets and her sauces, and she kens well what she’s about. She has the real spirit of it in her; and when her blood’s up for the credit of the family—”
“Eh, mem!” cried Bauby herself, putting her apron to her eyes, for her tears came readily; “do you think I would let them say that Mr. John couldna give a denner as good as the best? and he such a fine lad, and wanting a wife, and his mammaw so far away!”
“Never you mind his mammaw,” cried Miss Barbara, with natural family feeling; “she was never a great manager. But if you set that dinner on the table, Bauby Rolls, you’re a woman worthy of all respect, and I hope my nephew will know when he’s well off.”
She withdrew to the room prepared for her after this, a little crestfallen, yet doing due honour to the native powers. “We’ll say nothing to Janet,” she said to her faithful old maid, as she sat at her toilet. “Janet is an excellent woman, and just the right person for a house like mine. But she has not that invention. Four made dishes, besides all the solids! We’ll not say a word to Janet. It would be more than she could bear.”
“You see, Miss Barbara, there’s two of them to settle it,” said Agnes, as she brushed out the old lady’s abundant white hair; “and a man is awfu’ discriminating about eating and drinking. He may not have sense like a woman, but he has more taste of his mouth.”
“There is something in that,” said her mistress; “if it’s Rolls, John has got a treasure in that man. The Cornel’s dinners were always very English, to my way of thinking—but that would be their own fault; or if it’s my nephew himself—” she added, doubtfully. What was a great quality in Rolls catering for other people, would have been almost a vice, in the eyes of this prejudiced old lady, in the young master of the house.
“Mr. John!” said Agnes, still more moved—“a bonnie lad like him! Na, na; it would never be that. It’ll be the young misses, and not the dishes, he will be thinking about. And who knows but we may see the one that’s his choice? And I wish she may be a lovely young lady for his sake.”
“She would need to be something more than that,” said Miss Barbara, shaking her head. “A little money would be a great advantage to the estate.”
“Eh, but mem, he maun marry for love,” said Agnes; “what’s siller in comparison? And I think I know Somebody for my pairt—”
“Whisht, Agnes,” said her mistress peremptorily; “whatever thought may be in your head, to name it spoils all.”
For these two simple women were still of opinion that Providence had created John Erskine’s wife for him, and that he could not mistake the guidance of that unerring hand.
XXII
The ball was in full career; everybody had come to it from all the houses within reach, and the radius was wide—extending over the whole county. It was universally acknowledged that nobody could have imagined the drawing-room at Dalrulzian to be so large—and though the mothers and the old ladies were in a great state of alarm as to the facilities for stepping forth through the long windows after a dance, yet the young people, indifferent to the northern chill which they had been used to all their lives, considered the Walk, which seemed almost a portion of the room, to be the most delightful of all. Rintoul, though with many protestations and much scorn of the little rustic assembly, had been persuaded to wait for it, and was an object of attraction as great as—nay, in some respects greater than—John himself. There were no great young ladies in the company for whom it was worth his while to exert himself, and consequently the young man yielded to the soft flattery of all the pleased and grateful faces around him, and made himself agreeable in general, ending, however, almost invariably at the side of Nora, to whom it was a pleasing compensation for the indifference of the young master of Dalrulzian, who had been so distinctly destined for her by the country. John was very civil to Nora. He went out of his way, indeed, to be civil. He took her about the house, into the library, and the hall, to show her the alterations he was making, and appealed to her about their propriety in a way which Nora felt might have taken in some girls. But she was not taken in. She knew it was merely politeness, and that John would go away as soon as he had done his duty with a certain sense of relief. But Rintoul’s attentions were paid in a very different spirit. He asked her to dance as many times as he could without attracting too much notice. Nora felt that he discriminated this line finely, and was half provoked and half flattered by it, feeling acutely that whereas John Erskine did his best to show her all the civility which his position required, Rintoul went against all the duties of his position to get near her, to talk to her in a corner, to devote to her every moment which he could devote to her without remark. He was very careful, very
