Shan’t wrote, “He says he doesunt”—and there the correspondence ended.
To any reference on the part of Shan’t to her darlin’ Aunt Elsie, Marcus turned a deaf ear, and to Shan’t a stony countenance, and Shan’t learnt very quickly not to talk about her darlin’ aunt, but, child though she was, she felt there was disloyalty in that, so she thought about her a great deal—and when Uncle Marcus said: “What are you thinking about, Shan’t?” she would piously answer: “You wouldn’t like if I said!”
She lo-oved Scotland. She bathed and she paddled and she went out in a boat with John and she f-ished! And John spoilt her, as only a man knows how to spoil.
She quickly learnt at which farm—and it was at every farm—she could get oat cakes and milk at any time of the day, and she was convinced it was French the Scotch spoke, and when they called her wee, she said. “Mais non!”
She sat with joy under the Minister. The service was never too long, because at the end of it came a money-box on the end of a pole, which was poked into the face of every member of the congregation, and finally made its way upstairs and round the galleries, which perambulations she loved. She rode a cream-coloured pony, with a black stripe down his back, on the hill, and a fine swagger was hers as she rode up the steep, narrow tracks with Sandy and John walking one on either side of her, through the heather: she discoursing all the while on the differences between a church and a kirk—which were mainly, it seemed, the differences between dull bags or plates and a box on the end of a stick; serious differences, these. “There’s an a’ful difference between them whatever,” agreed John, but then he agreed to everything she said.
She was frightfully spoilt and Marcus was not behind the others in doing his share of the spoiling. So when she was thrown from the pony and lay in her bed unconscious, a black cloud hung over the Lodge of Glenbossie, and Marcus, in the depths of despair, wandered here and there unable to do anything because he had done everything that could be done and it had not availed. Sandy and John just stood around, to be there if anything should happen—and nothing happened, that was the worst of it. Anything—excepting, of course, one thing—would be better than this lying still—conscious of nothing. Mrs. Oven was so cross no one could go near her. It was the way sorrow took her, she told Pillar, who had dared to demand an explanation.
The household refused to be comforted, and when the Minister came to pray for the “wee lassie,” Uncle Marcus turned upon him furiously, saying, “It’s not come to that yet,” which was an old story, but it showed how true that old story was to human nature: and the Minister, no doubt, went on praying: being too devout a man to be deterred, and knowing probably that Mr. Maitland, like many another good man, had not yet met God face to face.
Then Aunt Elsie arrived wearing what Diana would have called a hat without a kick left in it, of which hat Marcus approved. It seemed impossible now to associate her with absurd behaviour. Here was no woman playing ridiculous jokes, with little fun in them, but a woman calm, composed, and most unhappy.
Marcus was glad she wouldn’t have anything to eat until she had seen Shan’t, and seen for herself how ill she was. Elsie thought it was impossible she could be so ill as Mr. Maitland had led her to expect; she was certain he exaggerated as all men did. The very fact of their strength made them overestimate the weakness of others. She followed him upstairs, and as he stopped at a door he put a finger to his lips. At any other time she might have resented this and might have said, Was it likely she would go into a sick-room talking and laughing? But now she nodded her head. She was an aunt subdued. She followed him into a darkened room: and a nurse rose from the bedside. She did not put her finger to her lips because she knew how unlikely it was that Shan’t could be disturbed by anything.
“There’s no change,” she said.