“Well done, Rachel! It proves what Alick always said, that her great characteristic is candour!”
“I hope she was not knocked up by the long night journey all at one stretch. Mrs. Curtis was very uneasy about it, but nothing would move her; she owned that Alick did not expect her, for she had taken care he should not object, by saying nothing of her intention, but she was sure he would be ill on Wednesday morning, and then Mrs. Curtis not only gave in directly, but all we married women turned upon poor Grace for hinting that Alick might prefer a day’s solitary illness to her being overtired.”
“She was extremely welcome! Alick was quite done for by all he had gone through; he was miserably ill, and I hardly knew what to do with him, and he mended from the moment his face lightened up at the sight of her.”
“There’s the use of strength of mind! How is Alick?”
“Getting better under Macvicar and Edinburgh winds. It was hard on him to have borne the brunt of all the nursing that terrible last week, and in fact I never knew how much he was going through rather than summon me. His sauntering manner always conceals how much he is doing, and poor Keith was so fond of him, and liked his care so much that almost the whole fell upon him at last. And I believe he said more that was good for Keith, and brought in Mr. Clare more than perhaps I should ever have been able to do. So though I must regret having been away, it may have been the best thing.”
“And it was by your brother’s earnest wish,” said Ermine; “it was not as if you had stayed away for your own pleasure.”
“No! Poor Keith repeatedly said he could not die in peace till he had secured our having the sole charge of his son. It was a strong instinct that conquered inveterate prejudice! Did I tell you about the will?”
“You said I should hear particulars when you came.”
“The personal guardianship is left to us first, then to Alick and Rachel, with £300 a year for the expenses. Then we have Auchinvar. The estate is charged with an equivalent settlement upon Mary, a better plan, which I durst not propose, but with so long a minority the estate will bear it. Alick has his sister’s fortune back again, and the Menteith children a few hundreds; but Menteith is rabid about the guardianship, and would hardly speak to Alick.”
“And you?”
“They always keep the peace with me. Isabel even made us a wedding present—a pair of miniatures of my father and mother, that I am very glad to rescue, though, as she politely told me, I was welcome to them, for they were hideously dressed, and she wanted the frames for two sweet photographs of Garibaldi and the Queen of Naples.”
Then looking up as if to find a place for them—
“Why, Ermine, what have you done to the room? It is the old parsonage drawing-room!”
“Did not you mean it, when you took the very proportions of the bay window, and chose just such a carpet?”
“But what have you done to it?”
“Ailie and Rose, and Lady Temple and her boys, have done it. I have sat looking on, and suggesting. Old things that we kept packed up have seen the light, and your beautiful Indian curiosities have found their corners.”
“And the room has exactly the old geranium scent!”
“I think the Curtises must have brought half their greenhouse down. Do you remember the old oak-leaf geranium that you used to gather a leaf of whenever you passed our old conservatory?”
“I have been wondering where the fragrance came from that made the likeness complete. I have smelt nothing like it since!”
“I said that I wished for one, and Grace got off without a word, and searched everywhere at Avoncester till she found one in a corner of the Dean’s greenhouse. There, now you have a leaf in your fingers, I think you do feel at home.”
“Not quite, Ermine. It still has the dizziness of a dream. I have so often conjured up all this as a vision, that now there is nothing to take me away from it, I can hardly feel it a reality.”
“Then I shall ring. Tibbie and the poor little Lord upstairs are substantial witnesses to the cares and troubles of real life.”
XXX
Who Is the Clever Woman?
“Half-grown as yet, a child and vain,
Knowledge and Wisdom, Tennyson
She cannot fight the fight of death.
What is she cut from love and faith?”
It was long before the two Mrs. Keiths met again. Mrs. Curtis and Grace were persuaded to spend the spring and summer in Scotland, and Alick’s leave of absence was felt to be due to Mr. Clare, and thus it was that the first real family gathering took place on occasion of the opening of the institution that had grown out of the Burnaby Bargain. This work had cost Colonel Keith and Mr. Mitchell an infinity of labour and perseverance before even the preliminaries could be arranged, but they contrived at length to carry it out, and by the fourth spring after the downfall of the F.U.E.E. a house had been erected for the convalescents, whose wants were to be attended to by a matron, assisted by a dozen young girls in training for service.
The male convalescents were under the discipline of Sergeant O’Brien and the whole was to be superintended by Colonel and Mrs. Keith. Ermine undertook to hear a class of the girls two or three times a week, and lower
