'Yes,' replied Ellinor, with a soft and pleased smile, for thereby hung a tale, as young Robert Wodrow (of whom more anon), the minister's only son, from his boyhood had sighed for Ellinor, and was never perfectly happy but when with her, and, like the lover of Rosamund Gray, 'he could make her admire the scenes he admired, fancy the wild flowers he fancied, watch the clouds he was watching, and not unfrequently repeat to her the poetry which he loved, and make her love it too.'
And so, in early youth, the boy and girl had grown fond of each other—far fonder than either of them at first suspected.
'By the way,' said Mary, suddenly, and pausing in the act of snipping off a decayed rose with her garden scissors, 'the Dunkeld family are back at Craigmhor.'
'With visitors, of course?'
'As usual—gentlemen to shoot when the season opens in a week or two; and one, a Captain Colville—a very handsome man—is, I hear, the intended of that haughty girl, Blanche Galloway.'
'Well, I am not ill-natured,' said Ellinor, with her pretty head on one side, as she reproduced Robert Wodrow's lily in flake-white; 'but the man who marries Blanche won't have his sorrows to seek. However, we shall not call, unless they do so first, of course; so these people are nothing to us.'
'Nay,' said Mary; 'with visitors at Craigmhor, the housekeeper must necessarily require more eggs, fowls, flowers, and I know not what.'
'Sending these things to market at Perth or Forteviot is all very well, but I do dislike orders from the great folks at the manor house.'
'So do I, but needs must, you know, Ellinor.'
'What would papa have thought?'