“I cannot help thinking about her. I wish I could. I have wondered a dozen times to-day if she knows that she is shut up alone in that nearly empty house. How the storm will beat upon Allan’s windows all the winter! How the wind will howl around the big, desolate place! And think of the real Theodora waiting among all kinds of rude surroundings on that bleak Fife coast. There must have been a mistake with that girl, uncle. She was meant for lofty rooms and splendid clothing, and to be waited upon hand and foot. Don’t you think souls must often wonder at the habitations they find themselves in?”
“There is One above who orders all things. He makes no mistakes of that kind, dearie. I dare say the girl is very happy. She will be a kind of heroine among her own class of women, and they will envy her her rich handsome lover.”
“And you think she will be happy under those circumstances? Not unless Fife girls are a higher creation of women. If they envy her they will hate her also; and I doubt if she will have many more friends among the fisher-lads. They will look upon her as a renegade to her order. The old women will suspect her, and the old men look askance at her with disapproving eyes. The girl will be a white blackbird; the properly colored birds will drive her out of the colony or pick her to death. It is only natural they should.”
“But they are a very religious people; and grace is beyond nature.
“I do not deny that, uncle; but did you ever find grace with a mantle large enough to cover a defenceless woman who was under the ban of the majority? Now did you?”
“I know what you are after, Mary. You want to go and see her. This talk is a roundabout way to enlist my sympathy.”
“Suppose I do want to go and see her, what then?”
“You could not go. The thing is simply impossible for some months at least. We know neither her name nor her place of residence. I should have to write to Allan on that matter; he might decline to tell me; if he did tell me, his answer will come with the snow and the winter storms. How then are you going to reach the Fife coast? And what kind of excuse could a lady make for visiting it about Christmas?”
“Excuses are plenty as blackberries in season. I wonder you did not ‘speer her name and hame;’ that would have been my first question.”
“If I am buying a ship, Mary, I look at her build; I want to know if she is sea-trusty; her name is of small account. Now, if I were you, I would not trouble myself about Allan’s sweetheart. I dare say she is happy enough.”