It was a Lover and His Lass

by Mrs. Oliphant

Here she stopped, perhaps with a sense of the rashness of this appeal. She was very tremulous and anxious, and as she looked round upon the three sisters, who had all been instrumental, as she thought, in disappointing her and scorning her son and leaving him behind, it was all the mother could do to restrain the flood of bitter words that came pouring to her lips. She stopped, however, hastily, and with a little agitated laugh.

"I am just taking the disappointment a great deal too seriously, you will say; but I am disappointed, you see. I looked for my Philip coming home happy and well pleased; and then to hear you were back before your time, and not a word from him!—But no doubt he'll be home to-morrow, and nothing changed. I am just going too fast; you will think nothing of it. I'm of an anxious nature, and it's my way."

The elder ladies accepted the apology, according to their different characters, Miss Jean eagerly agreeing that it was very disappointing when you were looking for your only son, and found nothing but strangers, and Miss Margaret receiving it stiffly with a dignity beyond words.

"For," she said, "though we might be glad of the company of any friend on a long journey, yet I never think it a good thing for women to put their fashes about luggage and so forth upon a man, unless he belongs to them. He is apt," she added, "to think more of it than it deserves—as if the women could have done nothing without him, which is not my way."

"No," said Mrs. Stormont, with a laugh which was in itself a confession of excitement; "you're one of those that like to be independent. But don't you copy your sister in that, Lilias, for it is a thing the men cannot bide. They would rather you were silly, and always clinging to them, than going your own gait in that bold manner. And though it may suit Margaret, who is done with everything of the kind, it is not the same for you."

Lilias had been watching the scene with anxious, half-amused eyes. There had always been little passages of arms between Margaret and Mrs. Stormont.

"Philip is not very clever about the luggage," she said. "He lost all his own things, you know. I told him I could do it better myself."

"And what did he say?" said the mother, beaming upon her. "Oh, nothing to say over again, I am sure, for he is not one for phrases, my Philip. And so you had your fill of dancing and every pleasure? Well, well! it is a grand thing to have your day: and now you've come back, Lilias, just as you went, you must not scorn your old friends. 'Sneer na British lads awa',' as Burns says."

"I hope she will sneer at nobody," said Miss Jean; "and two or three months in London is not such a terrible time. There are few changes in the parish, so far as I can hear. Old Mrs. Johnston at The Hillhead is gone, poor lady; but that was to be looked for at her age; and young Lauder married upon his housekeeper, which is a great pity, and must vex all his friends; and——"

"No," said Mrs. Stormont, still looking at Lilias; "there's little sneering in that bonnie face; but still hearing just one thing round you may give a warp to your mind, and you must remember, Lilias, that the grand folk in London, though they may be very smiling for a time, they just go their own gait, and think no more of a country girl, however she might be admired for the moment; but old friends are always safe—they never change."