Tennyson.
CHRISTMAS DAY again; but a white, white Christmas this time—a Christmas Day in bonnie Scotland.
In the sitting-room of an old-fashioned house in Edinburgh a little brown-haired, brown-eyed girl is dancing about in an immense state of excitement. She is a merry-looking little creature, with rosy cheeks, and wears a scarlet frock, which sets off those same cheeks to perfection.
“Can’t you be still even for a moment, Ruby?”
“No, I can’t,” the child returns. “And neither could you, Aunt Lena, if you knew my dear Jack. Oh, he’s just a dear! I wonder what’s keeping him? What if he’s just gone on straight home to Greenock without stopping here at all. Oh dear! what if there’s been a collision. Dad says there are quite often collisions in Scotland!” cries Ruby, suddenly growing very grave.
“What if the skies were to fall? Just about as probable, you wild little Australian,” laughs the lady addressed as Aunt Lena, who bears sufficient resemblance to the present Mrs. Thorne to proclaim them to be sisters. “You must expect trains to be late at Christmas time, Ruby. But of course you can’t be expected to know that, living in the Australian bush all your days. Poor, dear Dolly, I wonder how she ever survived it.”
“Mamma was very often ill,” Ruby returns very gravely. “She didn’t like being out there at all, compared with Scotland. ‘Bonnie Scotland’ Jenny always used to call it. But I do think,” adds the child, with a small sigh and shiver as she glances out at the fast-falling snow, “that Glengarry’s bonnier. There are so many houses here, and you can’t see the river unless you go away up above them all. P’raps though in summer,” with a sudden regret that she has possibly said something not just quite polite. “And then when grandma and you are always used to it. It’s different with me; I’ve been always used to Glengarry. Oh,” cries Ruby, with a sudden, glad little cry, and dash to the front door, “here he is at last! Oh, Jack, Jack!” Aunt Lena can hear the shrill childish voice exclaiming. “I thought you were just never coming. I thought p’raps there had been a collision.” And presently the dining-room door is flung open, and Ruby, now in a high state of excitement, ushers in her friend.
Miss Lena Templeton’s first feeling is one of surprise, almost of disappointment, as she rises to greet the new-comer. The “Jack” Ruby had talked of in such ecstatic terms had presented himself before the lady’s mind’s eye as a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome man, the sort of man likely to take a child’s fancy; ay, and a woman’s too.
But the real Jack is insignificant in the extreme. At such a man one would not bestow more than a passing glance. So thinks Miss Templeton as her hand is taken in the young Scotchman’s strong grasp. His face, now that the becoming bronze of travel has left it, is colourlessly pale, his merely medium height lessened by his slightly stooping form. Ay, but his eyes! It is his eyes which suddenly and irresistibly fascinate Miss Lena, seeming to look her through and through, and when Jack smiles, this young lady who has turned more than one kneeling suitor from her feet with a coldly-spoken “no,” ceases to wonder how even the child has been fascinated by the wonderful personality of this plain-faced man.