“Whisht! do you not see that you are vexing the bairns? Never mind her, my dear,” said the pleasant-looking young woman whom Lilias had called Ellen Wilson, sitting down on the stone beside her. “I think this part of the country seems to agree with you both. Your brother looks much better than he did when he came first.”
Lilias smiled gratefully in answer to this, and looked with loving pride at her brother. But Nancy Stirling had not yet said her say.
“Looks better, does he? I wonder how he could have looked before? Such a whitefaced creature I have seldom seen. He reminds me of the laddie that died at Pentlands, of a decline, a month since. I doubt he isn’t long for this world.”
“Whisht!” again interrupted Ellen, “you don’t know what you are saying, I think.”
“Archie is much better,” said Lilias, eagerly. “He couldn’t set his foot to the ground when we first came here; and now he can walk miles.”
“Oh, ay; change of air is ay thought good for the like of him. But it’s a deceitful complaint. We all ken that your father died of consumption,—and your mother too, it’s likely.”
“No,” said Lilias, in a low voice. “She died of fever.”
“Mrs Stirling,” exclaimed Ellen Wilson, “I canna but wonder that one that has had the troubles you have had, should have so little consideration for other folks. Do you not see that you are vexing the bairns?”
“Weel, it’s not my design nor my desire to vex them,—poor things! It never harmed me to get a friend’s sympathy; though it’s little ever I got. I’ll not trouble them.” And she went and seated herself at a little distance from the children.
An old man, with very white hair, but a ruddy and healthy countenance, had been walking up and down the path, his hands clasped behind his back, and his staff beneath his arm. As he passed the place where Mrs Stirling sat, he paused, saying in a cheerful, kindly voice: