UNDER DISCUSSION.
een took quite a long walk along the bleak country road, and on her way back dropped in at the lodge.
Mrs. Macintyre and the redoubtable 'Tammy'—a very round and chubby urchin, as unlike a denizen of the slums as could well be imagined—were sitting at tea by the cosy hearth, and there was a warm welcome and a cup for the visitor at once.
'Come awa', my wummin; I saw ye gang by,' said the good soul cheerily. 'My, but ye hae a fine colour; jist gang ben an' look at yersel' in the room gless. Ye're no' like the same lassie.'
Teen smiled rather incredulously, and did not go 'ben' to verify the compliment.
'It's a fine place this,' she said, as she dropped into a chair. 'A body's never tired. I wonder onybody bides in the toon when there's sae much room in the country.'
The wideness of the landscape, its solitary freedom, and its quiet, impressed the city girl in no ordinary way. After the crush and struggle of the overcrowded streets, which she had not until now left behind, it was natural she should be so impressed.
'I walkit as far as frae the Trongate to the Briggate, an' I saw naething but twa-three sheep an' a robin red-breist sittin' in the hedge,' she said musingly. 'It's breist was as red as it had been pented. I didna ken ye could see them leevin'?'
'Oh, there's thoosan's o' them,' quoth Tammy enthusiastically. 'In the spring that hedge up the road will be thick wi' nests, filled wi' eggs o' a' kinds.'
'Which ye'll leave alane, my man, or I'll warm ye,' said his aunt, with a warning glance. 'Ay, my wummin, this is a hantle better nor the Trongate or the Briggate o' Glesca. An' what's the young leddy aboot this efternune?'
'Writin' letters, I think. Has she said onything to you, Mrs. Macintyre, aboot makin' a Club for lassies in the toon?'
'Tammy,' said Mrs. Macintyre, 'tak' the wee jug an' rin up to the dairy, an' ask Mrs. Grieve if she'll gie ye a hap'nyworth o' mair cream.'
She did not urgently require the cream, but it was necessary at the moment to get rid of Tammy, who was a remarkably shrewd boy, with very long ears and a wonderful understanding.
Just as Tammy departed, rather unwillingly it must be told, the carriage from the house came bowling down the avenue, and Mrs. Macintyre ran out to open the gate. From her seat by the fire Teen could see over the low white window-blind that George Fordyce sat in it alone.
'There's something up,' said Mrs. Macintyre. 'D'ye see that?'
She held up a shining half-crown, which in his gracious mood the hopeful lover had bestowed upon the gatekeeper.
'I wonder if that's to be the Laird o' Bourhill?' she said meditatively. 'Ye wadna see him as he gaed by?—a very braw man, an' rich, they say—a Fordyce o' Gorbals Mill. Hae ye heard o' them?'
'Ay, often.' Teen's colour seemed to have deepened, but it might be only the fire which glowed upon it. 'Ye dinna mean to say that that micht happen?'
'What for no'?' queried Mrs. Macintyre easily, as she cut a slice from the loaf and held it on a fork before the fire. 'She's bonnie an' she's guid, besides being weel tochered. She'll no' want for wooers. I say, did ye ken Walter Hepburn, that carries on auld Skinny's business noo in Colquhoun Street?'
'Yes, well enough,' answered Teen slowly.
'There was a time when I wad hae said the twa—him an' Miss Gladys, I mean—were made for ane anither, but it's no' noo. He seems to hae forgotten her, an' maybe it's as weel. She maun mak' a braw mairriage, an' Fordyce is a braw fellow. I wish ye had noticed him.'
'Oh, I've seen him afore,' said Teen, with an evident effort, and somehow the conversation did not flow very freely, but was purely a one-sided affair, Teen simply sitting glowering into the fire, with an expression on her face which indicated that she was only partially interested in the gatekeeper's cheery talk. It was rather a relief when Tammy returned with the 'wee jug' full of cream, and his own mind full of the arrival of a new calf, a great event, which had happened at the dairy that very afternoon.
Mrs. Macintyre was, on the whole, disappointed with her guest, and saw her depart after tea without regret. She was altogether too reticent and silent for that garrulous person's liking. She would have been very much astonished had she obtained a glimpse into the girl's mind. Never, indeed, in all her life had Teen Balfour been so troubled and so anxious. Once or twice that evening Gladys caught her looking at her with a glance so penetrating and so anxious that it impressed her with a sort of uneasiness. She did not feel particularly happy herself. Now that her lover had gone, and that the subtle charm of his personality and presence was only a memory, she half regretted what had happened that afternoon. She felt almost as if she had committed herself, and she was surprised that she should secretly chafe over it.
'Teen,' she said quite suddenly, when they were sitting alone at the library fire after supper, when Miss Peck had gone to give her housekeeping orders for the morning, 'had you ever a lover?'
This extraordinary and unexpected question drove the blood into the colourless face of Teen, and she could not for the moment answer.
'Well, yes,' she said at length, with a faint, queer smile. 'Maybe I've had twa-three o' a kind.'
'Two or three?' echoed Gladys in a surprised and rather disapproving voice. 'That is very odd. But, tell me, have you ever seen anybody who wished to marry you, and whom you wished to marry?'
'There was a lad asked me yince,' answered Teen, 'but he was only seventeen—a prentice in Tennant's, wi' aicht shillin's a week. I've never had a richt offer.'
'Then what do you mean by saying you have had two or three lovers?' queried Gladys, in wonder.
'Oh, weel, I've keepit company wi' a lot. They've walkit me oot, an' ta'en me to the balls an' that—that's what I mean.'
Gladys was rather disappointed, perceiving that it was not likely she would get much help from the experience of Teen.
'I think that is rather strange, but perhaps it is quite right, and it is only I who am strange. But, tell me, do you think a girl always can know just at once whether she cares enough for a man to marry him?'
'I dinna ken; there's different kinds o' mairriages,' said Teen philosophically. 'I dinna think there's onything in real life like the love in "Lord Bellew's Bride," unless among the gentry.'
'Do you really think not?' asked Gladys, with a slight wistfulness. 'I have not read "Lord Bellew," of course, but I do believe there is that kind of love which would give up all, and dare and suffer anything. I should not like to marry without it.'
'Dinna, then,' replied Teen quite coolly. Nevertheless, as she looked at the sweet face rendered so grave and earnest by the intensity of her thought, her eye became more and more troubled.
'Among oor kind o' folk there's a' kind o' mairriages,' she began. 'Some lassies mairry thinkin' they'll hae an easier time an' a man to work for them, an' they sometimes fin' oot they've only ta'en somebody to keep; some mairry for spite, an' some because they'd raither dee than be auld maids. I dinna think, mysel', love—if there be sic a thing—has ony thing to do wi't.'
It was rather a cynical doctrine, but Teen implicitly believed what she was saying.
'Are you thinkin' on mairryin'?' she asked then; and, without waiting for an answer, continued in rather a hurried, troubled way, 'I wadna if I were you—at least, for a while. Wait or ye see what turns up. Ye'll never be better than ye are, an' men are jist men. I wadna gie a brass fardin' for the best o' them.'
Gladys did not resent this plain expression of opinion, because she perceived that a genuine kindliness prompted it.
'I am quite sure I shall not marry for a very long time,' Gladys replied; then they fell to talking over the other subject, which was so interesting to them both.
Underneath all her cynical philosophy there was real kindness as well as shrewd common-sense in the little seamstress. She was in some respects one of the best advisers Gladys could possibly have taken into her confidence.
These sweet, restful days were a benediction to the weary, half-starved heart of the city girl, and under their benign influence she became a different creature. Little Miss Peck, who adored Gladys, sometimes observed, with a smile of approval, the grateful, pathetic look in Teen's large solemn eyes when they followed the sweet young creature who had shown her a glimpse of the sunny side of life. It was not a glimpse, however, which Gladys intended to be merely transient. She had in view a scheme which was to be of permanent value to the poor little seamstress.
In the course of that week Gladys had occasion to be over-night in Glasgow, for the purpose of attending a concert with the family in Bellairs Crescent. It was a very select and fashionable affair, at which the élite and beauty of Glasgow were present. Gladys enjoyed the gay and animated scene as much as the music, which was also to her a rare treat. When they left the hall it was nearly eleven o'clock, and they had to wait some time in the vestibule till their carriage should move towards the door. It was a fine mild night, and the girls, with their soft hoods drawn over their heads, and their fleecy wraps close about their throats, stood close by the great doors, chatting merrily while they waited. The usual small crowd of loafers were hanging about the pavements, and as usual Gladys was saddened by the sight of the dejected and oftentimes degraded-looking denizens of the lower quarters of the city. It might be that, in contrast with the gay and handsomely-dressed people from the West End, their poverty seemed even more pitiable.
'Now, Gladys, no such pained expression, if you please,' said the observant Mina. 'Don't look as if you carried all the sins and sorrows of Glasgow on your own shoulders. Good, here is the brougham; and pray observe the expression on the countenance of James. Is it not a picture?'
Gladys could not but laugh, and they tripped across the pavement to the carriage. When they were all in, and Mr. Fordyce had given the word to the coachman, a woman suddenly swerved from the pavement and peered in at the carriage window. At the moment the impatient horses moved swiftly away, and when Gladys begged them to stop it was too late; the woman was lost in the crowd.
Gladys, however, had seen her face, and recognised it, in spite of the change upon it, as the face of Walter's sister Liz.
