"Oh, my goodness!" Rachel had never seen anything so magnificent in her life, and the tears stood in her eyes as she tried it on.
"It's your kindness I'm thinking of, my dear, not of the cloak," she said; "but there isn't the like of it between this and St Rules. It'll last me all my life."
Mona kissed her on the forehead, well pleased.
"And I brought a plain muff and tippet for Sally. She says she always has a cold in the winter. This is a reward to her for spending some of her wages on winter flannels, sorely against her will."
"Dear me! She will be set up. There will be no keeping her away from Bible Class and Prayer Meeting now! It is nice having you back, Mona. I can't tell you how many folk have been asking for you in the shop; there's twice as much custom since you came. Miss Moir wouldn't buy a hat till you came back to help her to choose it; and Polly Baines from the Towers brought in some patterns of cloth to ask your advice about a dress."
"Did she? How sweet of her! I hope you told her to call again. Has the Colonel's Jenny been in?"
"Oh no, it's very seldom she gets this length. Kirkstoun's nearer, and there's better shops."
"She told me there's no one to write her letters for her, since Maggie went away, and I promised to go out there before long and act the part of scribe. It was quite a weight on my mind while I was in London, but I will go as soon as I get these things arranged in the shop. Has the Colonel gone yet?"
"No; I understand he goes to his sister's to-morrow."
Most of Jenny's acquaintances gladly seized the opportunity to call on her when her master was away from home. The Colonel had the reputation of being the most outrageously eccentric man in the whole country-side, and it required courage of no common order to risk an accidental encounter with him. He might chance, of course, to be in an extremely affable humour, but it was impossible to make sure of this beforehand; and one thing was quite certain, that the natural frankness of his intercourse with his fellow-men was not likely to be modified by any sense of tact, or even of common decency. What he thought he said, and he often delighted in saying something worse than his deliberate thought. Not many years before, his family had owned the whole of the estate on which he was now content to rent a pretty cottage, standing some miles from the sea, in a few acres of pine-wood. Here he lived for a great part of the year, alone with his quaint old housekeeper Jenny, taking no part in the social life of the neighbourhood, but calling on whom he chose, when he chose, regardless of all etiquette in the matter. Strange tales were told of him—tales to which Jenny listened in sphinx-like silence, never giving wing to a bit of gossip by so much as an "Ay" or "Nay." She had grown thoroughly accustomed to the old man's ways, and it seemed to be nothing to her if his language was as strong as his potions.