“Your affectionate sister,
“Mary Douglas.
“P.S. My mother keeps just in her ordinary.”
This letter was given to Kirsteen out of the cover which Miss Jean opened with great precaution on account of the writing that was always to be found on the very edge of the paper where the letter was folded, and under the seal. Miss Jean shook her head while she did so and said aloud that Marg’ret was very wasteful, and what was the good of so many letters. “For after all,” she said, “news will keep; and so long as we know that we are both well what is the object in writing so often? I got a letter, it’s not yet three weeks ago, and here’s another. But one thing is clear, it’s not for me she writes them, and we must just try to get her a few franks and save her siller.” But she gave what she called a skreigh as soon as she had read half a page. “It’s your sister that’s going to be married?” that was indeed a piece of news that warranted the sending of a letter. Kirsteen read hers with a bright colour and sparkling eyes. She was angry, which was highly unreasonable, though I have remarked it in women before. She felt it to be an offence that Glendochart had been able to console himself so soon. And she was specially exasperated to think that it was upon Mary his choice had fallen. Mary! to like her as well as me! Kirsteen breathed to herself, feeling, perhaps, that her intimate knowledge of her sister’s character did not increase her respect for Mary. “Having known me to decline on a range of lower feelings.” These words were not written then, nor probably had they been written, would they have reached Kirsteen, but she fully entered into the spirit of them. “Mary! when it was me he wanted!” She did not like the idea at all.
“Yes,” she said sedately, “so it appears;” but her breathing was a little quickened, and there was no pleasure in her tone.
“And is your sister so like you?” said Miss Jean.
“She is not like me at all,” said Kirsteen. “She is brown-haired and has little colour, and very smooth and soft in all her ways.” Kirsteen drew a long breath and the words that she had spoken reminded her of other words. She thought to herself, but did not say it, “Now Jacob was a smooth man.” And then poor Kirsteen flamed with a violent blush and said to herself, “What a bad girl I am! Mary has never been false or unkind to me—and why should not she take Glendochart when I would not take him? And why should the poor man never have anybody to care for him because once he cared for the like of me?”
Miss Jean did not, of course, hear this, but she saw that something was passing in Kirsteen’s mind that was more than she chose to say. And, like a kind woman, she went on talking in order that the balance might come right in the mind of her young companion. “They will be coming to London,” she said, “just when the town is very throng—and that is real confusing to folk from the country. If it will be pleasing to you, Miss Kirsteen, I will ask them to their dinner; that is, if they will not think it a great presumption in the like of me.”
To tell the truth Kirsteen herself felt that Marg’ret’s sister was not exactly the person to entertain Glendochart and Mary, who were both of the best blood in the country; but she was too courteous to say this. “It would be very kind of you, Miss Jean,” she said, “but I am not sure that it would be pleasing to me. Perhaps it would be better to let them just take their own gait and never to mind.”
“I have remarked,” said Miss Jean, “in my long experience that a quiet gentleman from the country when he comes up to London with his new married wife, has often very few ideas about where he is to take her to. He thinks that he will be asked to his dinner by the chief of his name, and that auld friends will just make it a point to be very ceevil. And so they would perhaps at a quiet time; but when the town is so throng, and people’s minds fixed on what will be the next news of the war, and everybody taken up with themselves, it is not so easy to mind upon country friends. And I have seen them that come to London with very high notions just extremely well pleased to come for an evening to a countrywoman, even when she was only a mantua-maker. But it shall be just whatever way you like, and you know what my company is and who I would ask.”