“Miss Frankland?” said Colin, with a bright look of interest. The Mistress had been so much startled by this unexpected speech of her husband, that she turned round upon Colin with an anxious face, eager to know what effect an intimation so sudden might have upon him. For the farmer’s wife believed in true love and in first love with all her heart, and had never been able to divest herself of the idea that it was partly pique and disappointment in respect to Miss Matty which had driven her son into so hasty an engagement. “Is she still Miss Frankland?” continued the unsuspicious Colin. “I thought she would have been married by this time. She is a little witch,” the young man said with a conscious smile—“but I owe her a great many pleasant hours. She was always the life of Wodensbourne. Were they here this year?” he asked; and then another thought struck him. “Hollo! it’s only September,” said Colin; “I ought to ask, Are they here now?”
“Oh, ay, Colin, they’re here now,” said the Mistress, “and couldna be more your friends if you were one of the family. I’m no clear in my mind that thae two will ever be married. No that I ken of any obstacle—but, so far as I can see, a bright bonny creature like that, aye full of life and spirit, is nae match for the like of him.”
“I do not see that,” said the young man who once was Matty Frankland’s worshipper. “She is very bright, as you say; but he is the more honest of the two. I used to be jealous of Harry Frankland,” said Colin, laughing; “he seemed to have everything that was lacking to me; but I have changed my mind since then. One gets to believe in compensations,” said the young man; and he shut his hand softly where it rested on the table, as if he felt in it the tools which a dozen Harry Franklands could have made no use of. But this thought was but dimly intelligible to his hearers, to one of whom, at least, the word “jealous” was limited in its meaning; and, viewed in this light, the sentiment just expressed by Colin was hard to understand.
“I’m no fond of what folk call compensations,” said the Mistress. “A loss is aye a loss, whatever onybody can say. Siller that’s lost may be made up for, but naething more precious. It’s aye an awful marvel to me that chapter about Job getting other bairns to fill the place o’ the first. I would rather have the dead loss and the vacant place,” said the tender woman, with tears in her eyes, “than a’ your compensations. One can never stand for another—it’s awfu’ infidelity to think it. If I canna have happiness, I’ll be content with sorrow; but you’re no to speak of compensations to me.”
“No,” said Colin, laying his hand caressingly on his mother’s; “but I was not speaking of either love or loss. I meant only that for Harry Frankland’s advantages over me, I might, perhaps, have a little balance on my side. For example, I picked him out of the canal, as my father says,” the young man went on laughing; “but never mind the Franklands; I suppose I shall have to see them, as they are here.”
“Weel, Colin, you can please yourself,” said his father. “I’m no a man to court the great, but an English baronet, like Sir Thomas, is aye a creditable acquaintance for a callant like you; and he’s aye awfu’ civil as I was saying; but the first thing to be sure of is what you mean to do. You have had the play for near a year, and it doesna appear to me that tutorships, and that kind of thing, are the right training for a minister. You’ll go back to your studies, and go through with them without more interruptions, if you’ll be guided by me.”
But at this point Colin paused, and had a good many explanations to give. His heart was set on the Balliol scholarship, which he had once given up for Matty’s sake; and now there was another chance for him, which had arisen unexpectedly. This it was which had hastened his return home. As for his father, the farmer yielded with but little demur to this proposal. A clear Scotch head, even when it begins to lose its sense of the ideal, and to become absorbed in “the beasts,” seldom deceives itself as to the benefits of education; and big Colin had an intense secret confidence in the powers of his son. Honours at Oxford, in the imagination of the Scotch farmer, were a visionary avenue leading to any impossible altitude. He made a little resistance for appearance sake, but he was in reality more excited by the idea of the conflict—first, for the scholarship itself; then for all possible prizes and honours to the glory of Scotland and Ramore—than was Colin himself.
“But after a year’s play you’re no qualified,” he said, with a sense of speaking ironically, which was very pleasant to his humour. “A competition’s an awfu’ business; your rivals that have aye been keeping at it will be better qualified than you.”
At which Colin smiled, as his father meant him to smile, and answered, “I am not afraid,” more modestly a great deal than the farmer in his heart was answering for him; but then an unexpected antagonist arose.
“I dinna pretend to ken a great deal about Oxford,” said the Mistress, whose brow was clouded; “but it’s an awfu’ put-off of time as far as I can see. I’m no fond of spending the best of life in idle learning. Weel, weel, maybe its no idle learning for them that can spare the time; but for a lad that’s no out of the thought of settling for himself and doing his duty to his fellow-creatures—I was reading in a book no that long ago,” said Colin’s mother, “about thae fellowships and things; and of men so misguided as to stay on and live to be poor bachelor bodies, with their Greek and their Latin, and no mortal use in this world. Eh, Colin, laddie, if that was a’ that was to come of you!—”