“Yes, papa, I do.”
The laird always spoke Scotch to his mother, and to Grizzie also, who would have thought him seriously offended had he addressed her in book-English; but to his Marion’s son he always spoke in the best English he had, and Cosmo did his best in the same way in return.
“Tell me what you remember about her,” said the old man.
He had heard the same thing again and again from the boy, yet every time it was as if he hoped and watched for some fresh revelation from the lips of the lad—as if, truth being one, memory might go on recalling, as imagination goes on foreseeing.
“I remember,” said the boy, “a tall beautiful woman, with long hair, which she brushed before a big, big looking-glass.”
The love of the son, kept alive by the love of the husband, glorifying through the mists of his memory the earthly appearance of the mother, gave to her the form in which he would see her again, rather than that in which he had actually beheld her. And indeed the father saw her after the same fashion in the memory of his love. Tall to the boy of five, she was little above the middle height, yet the husband saw her stately in his dreams; there was nothing remarkable in her face except the expression, which after her marriage had continually gathered tenderness and grace, but the husband as well as the child called her absolutely beautiful.
“What colour were her eyes, Cosmo?”
“I don’t know; I never saw the colour of them; but I remember they looked at me as if I should run into them.”
“She would have died for you, my boy. We must be very good that we may see her again some day.”
“I will try. I do try, papa.”