In a few words Lilias told her all her trouble: how, though the spring had come, her aunt was by no means well yet, nor able to take charge of the school again; how she sometimes felt she was growing ill herself, at least she was sometimes so weary that she feared she could not go on long. Indeed, she tried not to be weary, but she could not help it. The feeling would come upon her, and then she grew dazed and stupid among the children; and she must try and get something else to do. This was what she wanted to be advised about.
By a strong effort, in her capacity of adviser, Nancy was able to keep back the words that came to the tip of her tongue:—“I knew it. Anybody might have seen the upshot. To put a lassie like that to do the work of a strong woman! What could one expect?”
She did not speak aloud, however, but rose and mended the fire under the tea-kettle, asking, as she sat down again:
“And what are you thinking of doing, my dear?”
“It’s not that I’m really ill,” continued Lilias, eagerly. “I think it’s because I have been within doors so much. If I could get something to do in the open air, I should soon be as well as ever again. I can’t go to service now, because I must stop at home with my aunt at night. She can’t be left. But I thought if I could be a herd-girl like Elsie Ray, or get weeding to do, or light field-work, or something—” And she looked so eagerly and so wistfully that Nancy was fain to betake herself to mending the fire again. For there was a strange, remorseful feeling stirring not unkindly at Nancy’s heart. To use her own words, she “had taken just wonderfully to this old-fashioned child.” Her patience, her energy, her unselfishness, her devotion to her aunt, had ever excited her admiration and respect. But that there was “a good thick layer of pride” for all these good qualities to rest upon, Nancy never doubted.
“And why not? Who has better right? The lassie is bonny and wise, and has good blood and a good name. Few have so much to be proud of. And if Mrs Blair thinks it’s more becoming in her brother’s daughter to teach children the catechism than to go out to common service, who can blame her that mind her youth and middle age?”
Indeed, it had always been a matter of congratulation to Mrs Stirling that this “leaven of pride” prevented Lilias’s absolute perfection; but now, to see “that delicate lassie, so bonny and gentle, more fit for the manse parlour or the drawing-room at Pentlands than any other place,”—to see her so utterly unmindful of pride or station, wishing so eagerly, for the sake of those she loved, to become a herd-girl or a field-labourer, quite disarranged all Nancy’s ideas. By another great effort, she checked the expression of her feelings, and asked:
“And what does your aunt say to all this?”
“Oh, I have said nothing to her yet. It would only trouble her; and if I can get nothing else to do, I must keep the children till the ‘harvest-play’ comes. That won’t be so very long now.”
“But, dear me, lassie! it must be that you have awful little to live on, if the few pence you could earn would make a difference,” said Nancy, forgetting, in her excitement, her resolution to say nothing rashly. “Surely it’s not needful that you should slave yourself that way.”