“No,” said Effie, “don’t think it is a wise age. And then I have Uncle John; and then, what is perhaps the best of all, I have nothing to do that calls for any guiding, so I am quite safe.”
“Oh, yes, that’s a grand thing,” said the old lady; “to be just peaceable and quiet, like Beenie and me, and no cross roads to perplex ye, nor the need of choosing one way or another. But that’s a blessing that generally comes on later in life: and we’re seldom thankful for it when it does come.”
“No,” said Effie, “I have nothing to choose. What should I have to choose? unless it was whether I would have a tweed or a velveteen for my winter frock; or, perhaps——” here she stopped, with a soft little smile dimpling about her mouth.
“Ay,” said the old lady; “or perhaps——? The perhaps is just what I would like to know.”
“Sarah,” said Miss Beenie from behind, “what are you doing putting things in the girlie’s head?”
“Just darn your stockings and hold your tongue,” said the elder sister. She leaned her weight more heavily on Effie’s arm by way of securing her attention.
“Now and then,” she said, “the road takes a crook before it divides. There’s that marshy bit where the Laggan burn runs before you come to Windyha’. If you are not thinking, it just depends on which side of the road you take whether you go straight on the good highway to Dumfries, or down the lane that’s always deep in dust, or else a very slough of despond. You’re there before you know.”
“But what has that to do with me?” said Effie; “and then,” she added, with a little elevation of her head, “if I’m in any difficulty, there is Uncle John.”
“Oh, ay: he’s often very fine in the pulpit. I would not ask for a better guide in the Gospel, which is his vocation. But in the ways of this world, Effie Ogilvie, your Uncle John is just an innocent like yourself.”
“That is all you know!” said Effie, indignantly. “Me an innocent!” She was accustomed to hear the word applied to the idiot of the parish, the piteous figure which scarcely any parish is without. Then she laughed, and added, with a sudden change of tone, “They think me very sensible at Allonby. They think I am the one that is always serious. They say I am fact: and they are poetry, I suppose,” she said, after a second pause, with another laugh.