“And all the folk were so glad to see him!” said Archie when he came home. Hugh was lingering outside, speaking to a friend who had walked with them over the hills, and Archie spoke fast and earnestly to have all told before he came in. “And they all minded on you, aunt, and said how thankful you would be, and how the Lord was good to you in your old age. And James Muir said he hoped he was never to go away again; and Allan Grant said that English Smith was to give up Glen Elder, and why should it not go back into the old hands again? They all said he would surely stay in the countryside now.”
“And what said my son to that?” asked Mrs Blair tremulously. She had not ventured to ask him herself yet.
“Oh, he said little. I think it was because his heart was so full. And, Lily, he put five golden sovereigns into the poor’s box! Steenie Muir told me that he saw his grandfather count it, and he heard him say that now surely the Lord was to bring back the good days to Glen Elder; and he thanked God for your sake, aunt. And, Lily, who kens but you may be ‘the wee white Lily of Glen Elder’ again?”
“A ‘wee white Lily,’ indeed,” said her aunt fondly and gravely; but Lilias laughed, first at the thought of the golden sovereigns and Nancy’s “nine-and-twenty more,” destined still to be hidden away in the china teapot, and then a little at being called the “Lily of Glen Elder.”
“It’s like a story in a book, aunt. It would be too much happiness to have the old days come back again—the happy days at Glen Elder;” and then her ready tears flowed at the thought that followed—
“They can never—never quite come back again.”