The heiress of McGregor

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

"Aunt Baby, I wish you would let me have the key of the east garret," said Marion next day after doctor and Mrs. Campbell had gone; "I want to look at father's pictures."

Miss Baby hesitated.

"Marie dear, I don't think I would touch them if I were you. I don't think you will find any pleasure in them."

"I can tell better when I see them," said Marion, loftily. "I think I have a right to the things which belonged to him, and whatever his faults were, he was my father."

"True, my dear. I would have you respect his memory, and for that very reason I would let the dead rest. However, take ell own way, lassie," she added, as Marion made a gesture of impatience. "Here is the key. Bring it back when you have done with it."

"I suppose I can have some of the pictures to take with me," said Marion; "and the rest can stay here till I have a house of my own."

"Oh yes, they can stay; never fear."

Marion ran up to the east garret, as it was called, and opened the stiff and seldom-used door. The place was not so much a garret as a little chamber in the roof, with a large dormer window a good deal darkened first by dust and cobwebs and secondly by an old green curtain.

Marion went down for a broom, with which she brushed away the cobwebs. She rolled up the curtain, threw open the window, and then looked eagerly about her.

A quantity of rather thin new-looking books were piled on the floor in one corner. In another were a number of large unframed canvases leaning against the wall. Marion eagerly seized upon two and turned them round. Her heart sank at the first glance, but she resolutely wiped the dust from their faces and placed them in the most favourable light and sat down on an old chair to look at them. Alas for her dreams of picture galleries and posthumous fame for her poor father! One of the pictures represented a broad pewter-coloured river running down the middle of the canvas at a very steep angle. On one verdigris-coloured bank was a large red church, which seemed on the point of slipping out of the picture. On the other, exactly opposite, was a large red house similarly endangered. A cow which, judging from the rest of the picture, must have been about sixty feet long, was standing lengthwise in the pewter river, to which if turned across she would have made a convenient bridge. The other picture was worse if possible than the first.