Our little daughter, born to such a heritage of love! I look at her often when she is asleep and wonder what her life will be. So far as her father and I can make it, it shall be a joy; and yet—and yet! To this little soul, as to every other new-born, life will interpret itself in its own terms, despite father-love, and mother-love and the love of friends—of whom she has already a host!
Cale has constituted himself prime minister of the nursery ever since her advent, and advises me on all occasions. She is sovereign in the house. Angélique and Marie fell out on the subject of which should launder the simple baby dresses, and, in consequence, we had an uncomfortable household for a week. Pete and his son, no longer "little" Pete, are her slaves. And as for the dogs, they guard the room when she takes her frequent naps, three lying outside the threshold, and one within, by the crib, to make known to us when she wakes. Of course, each dog has his day—otherwise there would be no living in the house with them.
Only this morning, Mère Guillardeau, now over a hundred, drove over to see her and brought with her a tiny pair of dainty moccasins that her nephew, André, sent down from the Upper Saguenay. Even the bassinet, in which she is at this moment lying, was woven by our Montagnais postman's squaw-wife and sent to me in anticipation of her coming. We must try not to spoil her.
Our first summer was spent in Crieff with Jamie and Mrs. Macleod.
Jamie showed me the great Gloire de Dijon roses growing on the stone walls of his home, and the ivy covering the gate that gives passage from the lower side of the garden to the meadows and the bright-glancing Earn. Before you step out through it, it frames the misty blue Grampians beyond the river. Jamie used to describe all this to me that winter in Lamoral; but the reality is more beautiful than any description.
The Doctor was with us for three weeks in August. We celebrated Jamie's birthday by repeating Gordon's celebration of it so long ago. We went over the moors and through the bracken to the "Keltic". We made our fire beneath the same tree, under which Gordon camped to the little boy's delight, nineteen years before, and we swung our gypsy kettle and made refreshing tea. We had a perfect day together.
It was on that occasion Jamie confided in me. He told me his decision to return to England was not wholly influenced by his publishers, but because of his interest in Bess Stanley who, he had heard, was seen a good deal in the company of a distant cousin of my husband's—another Gordon Ewart, named from his father from whom my Gordon bought the manor and seigniory of Lamoral.
He discerned that the only wise thing for him was to be on the spot, "to head the other off" as he put it.
"If I can be only one half day with Bess now and then, I can make her forget every other man," he declared solemnly.
I laughed inwardly, but I knew he spoke the truth. Jamie Macleod is fascination itself when he exerts himself.