“Oh, Lily! this is a bonny quiet place. How I wish they were lying here!”
“Yes,” said Lilias, softly, “among their friends. But it makes no difference. I never think of them as lying there.”
“Oh, no! they are not there. I suppose it is all the same to them. But yet, if I were going to die, I would like better to lie down here in this quiet place than among the many, many graves yonder in the town. Wouldn’t you, Lily?”
“Yes; for some things I would. I should like to be where the friends I love could often come. Look yonder how all the people are sitting beside the graves of their own friends. That is Ellen Wilson and her brother beside their father’s grave. I read the name on the stone as I came in this morning. And Mrs Stirling’s husband and children are buried there in the corner where she is sitting. She told me about them the last time she was in. I think the folk here must mind their friends better than they would if they never saw their graves.”
“But we’ll never forget our father and mother, though we can’t see their graves,” said Archie, eagerly; “I do wish they were lying here beside my grandfather and all the rest.”
Lilias did not answer, for they were about to be interrupted. Only one of the persons who were approaching them was known to her, and she did not think her a very agreeable acquaintance, and a slight feeling of impatience rose within her as she drew near.
Mrs Stirling was one of those unfortunate persons who constantly move in an atmosphere of gloom. Her face seemed to express a desire to banish all cheerfulness and silence all laughter wherever she came. She had never, even in her best days, been blessed with a heavenly temper, and much care and many sorrows had made it worse. Men had dealt hardly with her, and God, she believed, had done the same. One short month had made her a widow and childless, and then other troubles had followed. From circumstances of comfort she had been reduced, by the carelessness and dishonesty of those whom she had trusted, to a state of comparative poverty. This last trouble had been, in a measure, removed, but the bitterness it had stirred in her heart had never subsided.
If a subject had a dark side, she not only chose to look at it herself, but held it up before the eyes of all concerned. Having once been deceived, she never ceased to suspect, and, which was still worse, she even strove (from the best of motives, as she believed) to excite suspicion and discomfort in the minds of others; and, notwithstanding her well-known character as a prophesier of evil things, she did sometimes succeed in making people unhappy. She was, as the minister said, a pitiable example of the effects of unsanctified affliction, and a warning to all who felt inclined to murmur under the chastening hand of God.
During one or two visits at Mrs Blair’s cottage, Mrs Stirling had made Lilias uncomfortable, she scarce knew why; and now, though she did not say so to Archie, she heartily wished she would stay at the other end of the kirk-yard.
“Weel, bairns,” she said, as she drew near, “your aunt didna take you with her into the manse. Are you not weary sitting so long on the stones?”