As for him, if it had been the one desire of his life to atone for the sorrow he had caused her in his youth, he could not have done otherwise than he did. He made her comfort his first care. Her slightest intimation was law to him. Silently and unobtrusively, but constantly, did he manifest a grave and respectful tenderness towards her, till she, as well as others, could not but wonder, remembering the lad who would let nothing come between him and the gratification of his own foolish desires.
“You dinna mind your cousin Hugh, Lilias, my dear?” said Mrs Stirling to her one day. “I mind him well—the awfulest laddie for liking his own way that ever was heard tell of! You see, being the only one left to her, his mother thought of him first always, till he could hardly do otherwise than think first of himself; and a sore heart he gave her many a time. There’s a wonderful difference now. It must just be that,” added she, meditatively. “‘A new heart will I give you, and a right spirit will I put within you.’ Lilias, my dear, he’s a changed man.”
A bright colour flashed into Lilias’s face, and tears started in her eyes.
“I am sure of it! We may be poor and sick and sorrowful again, but the worst of my aunt’s troubles can never come back to her more.”
He was very kind to his young cousins, partly because he wished to repay the love and devotion which had brightened so many of his mother’s dark days, but chiefly because he soon loved them dearly for their own sakes. Lilias he always treated with a respect and deference which, but for the gentle dignity with which his kindness was received by her, might have seemed a little out of place offered to one still such a child.
With Archie he was different. The gravity and reserve which seemed to have become habitual to Hugh Blair in his intercourse with others never showed itself to him. The frank, open nature of the lad seemed to act as a charm upon him. The perfect simplicity of his character, the earnestness with which he strove first of all to do right, filled his cousin with wonder, and oftentimes awoke within him bitter regret at the remembrance of what his own youth had been; and a living lesson did the unconscious lad become to him many a time.
No one rejoiced more heartily than did Mrs Stirling at the coming home of Hugh Blair and the consequent change of circumstances to his mother and his little cousins; but her joy was expressed in her own fashion. One might have supposed that, in her opinion, some great calamity had befallen them, so dismal were her prophecies concerning them.
“It’s true you have borne adversity well, and that is in a measure a preparation for the well-bearing of prosperity. But there’s no telling. The heart is deceitful, and it is no easy to carry a full cup. You’ll need grace, Lilias, my dear. And you’ll doubtless get it if you seek it in a right spirit.” But, judging from Mrs Stirling’s melancholy tones and shakings of the head, it was plain to see that she expected there would be failure somewhere.
With keen eyes she watched for some symptoms of the spoiling process in Lilias, and was slow to believe that she was not going to be disappointed in her, as she had been in so many others. But time went on, and Lilias passed unscathed through what, in Nancy’s estimation, was the severest of all ordeals. She was sent to a school “to learn accomplishments,” and came home again, after two years, “not a bit set up.” So Mrs Stirling came to feel at last that she might have faith in the stability of her young favourite.
“She’s just the very same Lilias Elder that used to teach the bairns and go wandering over the hills with her brother; only she’s blither and bonnier. She’s Miss Elder of the Glen now, as I heard young Mr Graham calling her to his friend; but she’s no’ to call changed for all that.”