CHAPTER XXXIV
An Evening Visit
I now saw much less of Elsie; but I went with Turkey, as often as I could, to visit her at her father’s cottage. The evenings we spent there are amongst the happiest hours in my memory. One evening in particular appears to stand out as a type of the whole. I remember every point in the visit. I think it must have been almost the last. We set out as the sun was going down on an evening in the end of April, when the nightly frosts had not yet vanished. The hail was dancing about us as we started; the sun was disappearing in a bank of tawny orange cloud; the night would be cold and dark and stormy; but we cared nothing for that: a conflict with the elements always added to the pleasure of any undertaking then. It was in the midst of another shower of hail, driven on the blasts of a keen wind, that we arrived at the little cottage. It had been built by Duff himself to receive his bride, and although since enlarged, was still a very little house. It had a foundation of stone, but the walls were of turf. He had lined it with boards, however, and so made it warmer and more comfortable than most of the labourers’ dwellings. When we entered, a glowing fire of peat was on the hearth, and the pot with the supper hung over it. Mrs. Duff was spinning, and Elsie, by the light of a little oil lamp suspended against the wall, was teaching her youngest brother to read. Whatever she did, she always seemed in my eyes to do it better than anyone else; and to see her under the lamp, with one arm round the little fellow who stood leaning against her, while the other hand pointed with a knitting-needle to the letters of the spelling-book which lay on her knee, was to see a lovely picture. The mother did not rise from her spinning, but spoke a kindly welcome, while Elsie got up, and without approaching us, or saying more than a word or two, set chairs for us by the fire, and took the little fellow away to put him to bed.
“It’s a cold night,” said Mrs. Duff. “The wind seems to blow through me as I sit at my wheel. I wish my husband would come home.”
“He’ll be suppering his horses,” said Turkey. “I’ll just run across and give him a hand, and that’ll bring him in the sooner.”
“Thank you, Turkey,” said Mrs. Duff as he vanished.
“He’s a fine lad,” she remarked, much in the same phrase my father used when speaking of him.
“There’s nobody like Turkey,” I said.
“Indeed, I think you’re right there, Ranald. A better-behaved lad doesn’t step. He’ll do something to distinguish himself some day. I shouldn’t wonder if he went to college, and wagged his head in a pulpit yet.”