It will whiles make me smile to think of the coming of Bryde and Margaret to the Big House that day, for with all her cleverness the eyes of Margaret could not be leaving her man, and her mouth would tremble into a smile, and her cheeks glow at a word; but Bryde that day was all-conquering.
To my aunt—the Leddy, as they will be naming her—to her he was all courtesy, all deference, yet he would be surprising her into quick laughing—indeed, I will always be remembering her words.
"My dear," said she, and her voice trembling, "I am glad to welcome you—I am glad to be proud of you, for I will have loved you like my own son," and she kissed him very heartily and wept a little, and the Laird, my uncle, broke out—
"Hoots, what is it for—this greetin'; the lad kens he's welcome. King's ship or no', and we will be having a bottle of the wine of Oporto," says he, and came back with it himself, handling the dusty age-crusted bottle with great skill, and we drank Bryde McBride his health. "'To the day when you will be slaying a deer,'" said the Laird, "'and to the day when you will not be slaying a deer,' and I'm thinking, Bryde, to-day you will have had a very good hunting."
And at that we drained our glasses, and Mistress Margaret and the mother of her would be looking with new eyes at the Laird, for there was a double twist to the thrust, and so it was that Bryde took up his life among us again, after his wandering to the sea. But he would be better for the wandering, having made himself a milled man in the hard school of the world.
You will be thinking of him on the farm on the moor, with that great red man his father and the brother Hamish that came so late, and Belle, that silent woman, watching with dark soft eyes. Margaret, the Flower of Nourn, was there often and none to gainsay her, for Bryde did not long keep his love a secret, but bearded the Laird, and won, for all that the old man opened the business with a great sternness.
"You will be over sib to the lass," says he at the first go-off, "but her mother will be telling me she will have set her heart on you, and, Bryde McBride," said he, at the finish of it, "as you do to the lass, so may God deal wi' you."
And in all that time, although he would be in every house mostly, and Hugh and he often thrang at the talking, and on the hill together and among the crops, in all that time till the wedding of Hugh, never did I hear that Helen Stockdale had speech with Bryde McBride. But I was to have word of it.