"It is very perplexing—these seigniorial rights and rents and transferences. I don't make any pretence of understanding them."
"Are the farm buildings occupied now?"
"No; Doctor Rugvie wants to attend to those himself. It is his recreation to make plans for this farm, and he will be here himself to see that they are begun and carried out right. He tells me he has always loved Canada."
"And what am I to do for you? I want to begin to feel of a little use," I said half impatiently.
"You are doing for me now, my dear." (How easily Delia Beaseley's name for me came from the "elderly Scotchwoman's" lips!) "Your presence cheers Jamie; the young need the young, and belong to the young—"
"But," I protested, "I am not young; I am twenty-six."
"And Jamie is twenty-three. But when you laughed together to-night, you both might have been sixteen. It did me good to hear you; this old house needs just that—and I can't laugh easily now," she added. I heard a note of hopelessness in her voice.
How lovely she was as she sat by the fire in the soft radiance of candle light! "Elderly"!—She could not be a day over fifty-seven or eight. The fine white cap rested on heavy, smoothly parted hair; the figure was round to plumpness; the dress, not modernized, became her; her voice was still young if a little weary, and her brown eyes bright, the lids unwrinkled.
"Do you know Delia Beaseley well? Doctor Rugvie says she is a fine woman."
"She is noble," I said emphatically; "I feel that I know her well, although I have seen her only a few times."