But he left Stirling that night with the half-mollified Lindsay. So much at least was gained.
CHAPTER III.
Fair gladsome waking thoughts, and joyous dreams more fair!
CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.
In the parlour at Port Dundas the window is open, the little muslin blind waves in the soft air, and sounds steal in drowsily through the sunshine from without. At the table sits Agnes, in her best gown, writing a letter to Harry. Violet, in a corner, stands erect with her hands behind her, defying Rose, who sits with great dignity in the arm-chair to puzzle her with that spelling-book. Little Harry, now beginning to walk, creeps about the floor at his own sweet will; and indeed they are all idling but Martha, who still works at the “opening,” though you perceive she does it slowly, and has not the keen interest in “getting on” which she had a week ago.
Agnes writes rather laboriously—she is no penwoman; and what she writes is just about nothing at all—a domestic letter, full of implied tenderness and exuberant hopes, through which you can scarcely see the sober and solemn solicitude which has made Harry’s wife a woman deeper than her nature, and elder than her years. But the heart of the young wife is very light now, and she looks at the sleeve of her best gown with a smile, as she pauses to arrange the next sentence, and beats upon her hand with the feather of her pen. Little Harry seated at her feet, which he makes a half-way house between two corners, tears away with appetite at a great orange, refreshing himself, before, on hands and knees, he starts upon another circumnavigation.
Looking down upon him lovingly, the young mother concocts her next sentence with triumphant success; and you can guess, without looking over her shoulder, what a pretty outline grows upon her paper, under that inspired pen, which can write so quickly now. It is not a daguerreotype of little Harry which his mother will send to his father; but indeed one cannot tell what height of excellence and warm expression this very daguerreotype can attain to, when the sunshine which makes the portraiture is not the light of common day, but of love.
Nor are you working either, little dark-haired Violet! Alas, it is no sensible educational purpose which has carried you into the corner, with one defiant foot planted firmly before the other, and those restless hands crossed demurely behind. Not a respectable lesson gravely administered and received, as lessons should be, but a challenge proudly given to Rose to “fickle” you, who are very confident in this particular of spelling, that you cannot be “fickled.” A slight curve upon the brow of Rose, as she hunts up and down through all those pages for hard words, intimates that she is a little “fickled” herself; and Violet raises her head more proudly, and Rose laughs with greater mirth as each successive word is achieved, though now and then the elder trifler discovers that she is idle, and wonders why it is, and remembers the cause which has made their industry less urgent, with new smiles and joy.
But Martha still works at her “opening.” This, the last which they are ever to do, Harry says, is a collar very elaborately embroidered, which Martha resolves shall be bestowed on Agnes, as one memorial of those toilsome days when they are past. The sterner lines in Martha’s face have relaxed, and her eyelids droop softly with a grateful pleasant weariness over her subdued eyes. Sometimes the curves about her mouth move with a momentary quiver, as though a few tears were about to fall; but the tears never fall. And sometimes she lays down her work on her knee, and droops her head forward, and looks up under her eyelashes with a smile at the young mother, or at the two household flowers. These are long, loving, lingering glances, not bright but dim with the unusual gentleness of this unusual rest.
The sounds without do not strike upon your ear harshly, as sounds do in winter, for this April day is warm and genial, like a day in June, and has in it a natural hush and calm, which softens every distant voice. Chief of all passing voices come gaily through the sunshine and the open window, the song of Maggie McGillivray. She is sitting again on her mother’s step, with the full sunshine, which she does not at all heed, streaming upon her brown, wholesome, comely face. Her scissors flash in the sun, her yellow hair burns; but Maggie only throws over her head the finished end of her web, and clips and sings with unfailing cheerfulness. This time it is not the “Lea Rig,” but “Kelvin Grove,” to which the shears march and keep time; but it is impossible to tell what a zest it gives to idleness, when one can look out upon industry so sunshiny and alert as this.