“Miserable!” cried Effie. “We were not miserable; we were quite happy; we wanted nothing. Papa may care for new people, but we were happy and wanted nothing, Eric and me.”
“Then, my little Effie,” said Uncle John, “it is not because of your own mother that you are looking like a little fury—for you see you have learned to let her go, and do without her, and be quite contented in a new way—but only because your father has done the same after his fashion, and it is not the same way as yours.”
“Oh, Uncle John, I am not contented,” cried Effie, conscience-stricken; “I think of mamma every day.”
“And are quite happy,” he said with a smile, “as you ought to be. God bless her up yonder, behind the veil. She is not jealous nor angry, but happy too. And we will be very good friends with Mistress Ogilvie, you and me. Come and see that everything is ready for her, for she will not have an easy handful with you two watching her night and day.”
CHAPTER II.
Though Mr. Moubray said this, it is not to be supposed that he liked his brother-in-law’s second marriage. It was not in flesh and blood to do that.
Gilston House must always be the most important house in that parish to the minister; for it is at once nearest to the manse, and the house in which he is most likely to find people who have at least the outside gloss of education. And he had been used to go there familiarly for nearly twenty years. He had been a favourite with the old people, Mr. Ogilvie’s father and mother, and when their son succeeded them he was already engaged to the minister’s young sister. There was therefore a daily habit of meeting for nearly a lifetime. The two men had not always agreed. Indeed it was not in human nature that they should not have sometimes disagreed strenuously, one being the chief heritor, restraining every expenditure, and the other the minister, who was always, by right of his position, wanting to have something done.
But after all their quarrels they “just ’greed again,” which is the best and indeed the only policy in such circumstances. And though the laird would thunder against that “pig-headed fellow, your brother John,” Mrs. Ogilvie had always been able to smile, knowing that on the other hand she would hear nothing worse from the minister than a recommendation to “remind Robert that schoolhouse roofs and manse windows are not eternal.”
And then the children had woven another link between the two houses. Eric had been Uncle John’s pupil since the boy had been old enough to trot unattended through the little wood and across the two fields which separated the manse from the House; and Effie had trotted by his side when the days were fine, and when she pleased—a still more important stipulation. They had been the children of the manse almost as much as of the House.
The death of the mother had for a time drawn the tie still closer, Ogilvie in his first desolation throwing himself entirely upon the succour and help of his brother-in-law; and the young ones clinging with redoubled tenderness to the kind Uncle John, whom for the first time they found out to be “so like mamma!” There never was a day in which he did not appear on his way to his visiting, or to a session meeting, or some catechising or christening among the hills. They were dependent upon him, and he upon them. But now this constant association had come to an end. No, not to an end—that it could never do; but, in all likelihood, it must now change its conditions.