But no one had touched any of the numerous pictures of Maggie. They were on the wall, the mantel, the table, the easel. She glanced at them, and left the room; but after a moment’s hesitation, she returned, drew up the blinds, and stood resolutely before the large one upon the easel. “What is there in her face that is so charmful?” she asked. “Why did it draw me back here? Does my sense of justice forbid me to dislike without a reason, and am I looking for one?” She went from picture to picture. She stood long before some, she took one or two in her hand. She did not like the girl, but she would not be unfair in her criticisms. “Whatever she is doing, she is like a poem. I could not bake oat cakes, and look as if I had stepped out of Gessner’s Idyls. But she does. What limpid eyes! And yet they have a look of sorrow in them—as if they had been washed clear in tears—she is not laughing anywhere. I like that! If she were gay and jocund in that picture how vulgar it would be.—If her splendid hair were unbound, and her fine throat and neck without kerchief, and if she were simpering with a finger on a dimple in her cheek, I know that I should detest her. It is her serenity, her air of seriousness, which is so enthralling—I wonder what her name is—it should be something grand, and sweet, and solemn—I should think Theodora would suit her—What nonsense! In a Fife fishing village every girl is either Jennie or Maggie or Christie.” So she mused, going from picture to picture, until they acquired a kind of personality in her mind.
Her uncle came home a little sad. “Allan has gone again,” he said. “I seem to have seen very little of the lad. He is such a fine lad, too. We had a few happy hours together at the last. I am very glad of that! When he comes home next time, he will settle, and never leave me again. I shall be a happy man when that day gets around, Mary.”
“He will settle, that is, he will marry that fisher-girl! He has told you all about her, he says?”
“He was very honest and candid with me, very.”
“What is her name, uncle?”
“I do not know. He did not tell me, and I never thought of asking.”
“Where does she live?”
“Really, Mary, I never asked that either. I don’t think it makes the least difference.”
“Oh, but it does. I am very much disappointed. I was thinking we could take a trip to the village, and see the girl ourselves. Would not that be a good thing?”
“It would be a very bad thing, a very dishonorable thing. If I thought it necessary to play the spy on my son Allan, I should prefer to know he was dead. The girl may become my daughter. I should be ashamed to meet her, if I had gone to peep at her behind her back. She would not despise me more than I should despise myself.”