Two years younger than Mary, Ellinor was now twenty. Her dark hazel eyes were winning in expression, and, like Mary's, longly-lashed, and what lovely lips she had for kisses! Hers was no button of a mouth, however. Critics might say that it was a trifle too large; but her lips were beautifully curved, red, and alluring, often smiling, and showing the pure, pearl-like teeth within; and yet, when not smiling, the normal expression of Ellinor's face was thoughtful.
The orphan daughters of Colonel Wellwood—a Crimean veteran—the two girls lived alone in their pretty sequestered home at Birkwoodbrae. They had not a female relation in the world whom they could have invited to share it; and though sometimes propriety suggested a matron or chaperone as a necessity to two handsome and ladylike girls, living almost under the shadow of the manse, and as the minister, Dr. Wodrow, had been left by their father on his death-bed a species of guardian to them, 'why hamper themselves with some uncomfortable old frump, when they could be perfectly happy without her, with their father's old servants about them?' was always the after reflection of each.
Thus for three years the time had glided away, and Mary's life we shall show to have been a busy, active, and useful one, adding to and nearly doubling indeed the little income left them by their father, through her own efforts in the production and sale of the agricultural produce of the few acres of Birkwoodbrae, with a skill and independence of spirit that won the admiration and respect of all who knew her.
Yet the house they loved so well, and the patch of land around it, did not belong to the orphan sisters.
The heir of the entail—for, according to 'Shaw's Index,' small though the property of Birkwoodbrae might be, it had been entailed as far back as 1696, with date of tailzie 1694, by Ronald Wellwood, a remote ancestor, who was one of the many victims of King William's treachery at Darien—the heir of entail, we say, held a lucrative diplomatic appointment abroad, and left his two nieces in undisturbed enjoyment of the house and lands.
Thus the latter, in Mary's care, had become quite a little farm, the produce of which, in grazing—even in grain—butter, eggs, and poultry, doubled, as we have said, the pittance left to her and her sister by their father, the improvident old colonel.
In the words of Herbert's Jacula Prudentum, Mary Wellwood's motto had ever been, 'Help thyself and God will help thee.'
The house of Birkwoodbrae was a little two-storied villa, with pretty oriel windows, about which the monthly roses, clematis, and Virginia creeper clambered: and it had been engrafted by the colonel on an old farmhouse, the abode of his ancestors, which had two crow-stepped gables and a huge square ingle-lum—the later being now the ample kitchen fireplace of the new residence, and in the remote quarter of the little household.
A lintel over the door that now led to the barnyard told the date of this portion of the mansion, as it bore the legend often repeated by Mary:—
'BLISSIT BE GOD FOR AL HIS GIFTIS. R. W. 1642,'