‘There will be a row between them one of these days. My father will want her to marry Semple. I know he is in love with her; and Margaret won’t have him.’
‘I should think not, indeed!’ I exclaimed.
I had seen this young fellow, and I confess I took a violent dislike to him. He came over to the farm one afternoon, and I thought I had never seen a more vulgar creature. He was dressed in the latest fashion—on a visit to a farmhouse, too! He had a coarse, commonplace face, a ready, officious manner, and the most awful accent I ever heard on the tongue of any human being. I cannot say I admire the Scotch accent; it is generally harsh and disagreeable; but when it is joined to an affectation of correctness, when every syllable is carefully articulated, and every r is given its full force and effect, the result is overpowering. The young man was good enough to give me a considerable share of his attention, and I could hardly conceal my dislike of him. He patronized old Mr. Lindsay, was loftily condescending to Alec, and treated Margaret as if she ought to have been highly flattered by the admiration of so fine a gentleman.
‘Your respected cousin seemed to me as if he were greatly in need of a kicking,’ I said to Alec.
‘If he gets even a share of Uncle James’s property he will be a rich man,’ said Alec thoughtfully. ‘My father would think it a sin for Maggie to refuse a man with a hundred thousand pounds.’
‘So would a good many fathers, I suppose,’ said I.
I am sorry to see Alec’s attitude to his father; yet I fear he judges the old man only too accurately.
For the last few days we have had nothing but rain. Rain, rain, rain, till the leaves were fairly washed off the trees, and the very earth seemed as if it must be sodden to the rocks beneath. Yesterday afternoon I felt tired of being shut up in the large bare room which I have been using as a studio, so I put on a thick suit, and went out for a stretch in the midst of a perfect deluge. I crossed the river by a stone bridge, about a mile lower down, as the stepping-stones were covered, and soon I got to a wide expanse of country, composed of large sodden green fields, barely reclaimed from the moor, and even now, in spite of drains, partly overgrown with rushes. There were no fences; and the hardy cattle wandered at will over the land.
It was inexpressibly dreary. There was little or no wind—no clouds in the sky—only a lead-coloured heaven from which the rain fell incessantly. There was not a house, not a tree, not a hedgerow in sight; and the rain-laden atmosphere hid the horizon.
Suddenly I heard the noise of singing, the singing of a child. I was fairly startled, and looked round, wondering where the sound could come from. I was on the border between the moor and the reclaimed land; and there was literally nothing in sight but the earth, the sky, and the rain, except what looked like a small heap of turf left by the peat-cutters. Could some stray child be hidden behind it? If so, I thought, its life must be in danger.