At this moment Alison was putting to bed her two-year-old brother, the 'young laird,' and apple of all eyes at The Mains. She sat with him in her arms at the tiny window of the nursery and crooned him to sleep, and as she sang she looked out at the murky red sky behind the plane trees, at the rooks circling and cawing on their way to bed, at the old lime, a towering mass of black shadow in the gloaming. This was the scene that Alison looked upon continually every evening of her life—this young woman without lovers and innocent of kisses.
Mrs. Graham was breathing rather quickly by the time she stood at the nursery door, and her first elated sentences were somewhat breathless.
'Braw news your father has brought home for you to-night, Ally!' she began.
'Wheesht, mother!' said Alison, 'you will waken Jacky.'
'Ah!' said Mrs. Graham, knowingly, 'you'll soon have done with Jacky now!'
'Sure,' said Alison, lifting round grey eyes to her mother's face, and pressing Jacky's head close to her shoulder, 'I've no wish to be done with Jacky;' and she put a kiss on the boy's curls.
'Tut!' said Mrs. Graham, impatiently, 'you might have little Jackys of your own. Think you never of that, Ally?' Alison blushed in the dark: it was not a fair question. Jacky was so sound asleep by this time that the voices did not wake him, and she rose, laid him on the wooden cot beside her own bed, and happed the clothes about him with deft movements full of a natural motherliness.
'Come down now, Ally,' said her mother, 'I want you.'
Alison obeyed her mother, as hitherto she had always done, in the simple management of her life.
'You are to get a man, Ally, after all,' said the lady, impressively. 'A husband, and a good one. Isn't that the brawest news ever you've heard yet?'