“Then what will I do, Davie? What will I do? I am sae miserable. Do hae some pity on me.”
“You speak as if happiness was ‘the because’ of life. Do? Do your duty, and you will be happy, whatever wind blows. And as to my having pity on you, I would love you little if I gave way now to your impatience and your wounded pride. Who loves you if I don’t? I am aye thinking of the days when we will have a braw house of our ain. Can you not wait?”
“It is lang waiting; and many a hope goes wi’ the weeks and the months. Davie, I canna go back.”
“You must go back. I will write a letter to Dr. Balmuto and ask him to put you with some decent family in Kinkell: and keep his own eye on you. What can you want more than that? And let me tell you, Maggie, I think it very unsisterly of you, bothering and hampering me with women’s quarrels, when I am making myself a name among them that will be looked to for the carrying on o’ the kirk in the future. But I’ll say no more, and I’ll forgive this romantic folly o’ yours, and to-morrow I’ll put you in the Stirling train, and you’ll go, as I tell you, to Dr. Balmuto.”
Maggie made no further objections. David wrote the promised letter, and he spent a part of the next day in showing her the “wonderfuls” of the cathedral and the college. He was even gentle with her at the last, and not a little proud of the evident sensation her fresh, brilliant beauty caused; and he asked her about her money matters, and when he put her in the train, kissed her fondly; and bade her “be brave, and patient, and cheerful.”
And still Maggie said nothing. Her eyes were full of tears, and she looked once or twice at her brother in a way that made his heart dirl and ache; but she seemed to have resigned herself to his direction. Only, at the first station beyond Glasgow, she got out of the train, and she allowed it to go on to Stirling without her.
CHAPTER XI. — DRUMLOCH.
“Brown shell first for the butterfly
And a bright wing by and by.
Butterfly good-bye to your shell,
And, bright wings, speed you well”