“Dinna think I’m wanting anything from you, Miss Marjory. The worst o’ puir folk is that they’re aye wanting. Na, na, it was only for a sight o’ your face, which does a poor body good, and to read ye my Willie’s letter. Jenny, ye taupie, bring me Willie’s letter. I can maistly say it off by heart, but Miss Heriot will like to see it, and I might forget something. Eh, I’m a happy woman! The captain o’ the ‘William and Mary’s’ dead out yonder (pointing her thumb over her shoulder, which was the way or indicating distance in Comlie), and Willie’s to bring the boat home. It’s as good as a ship to him; for ance a captain aye a captain, and his owners are no the men to put him back in a mate’s place.”
“I am very glad to hear of Willie’s promotion,” said Marjory; “was the captain a Comlie man?”
“Eh, you’ll think me awfu’ hard-hearted,” said Mrs. Patterson, struck with compunction, and pausing with her large horn spectacles in her hand; “but you canna suppose I would have spoke as free and been as thankfu’ if he had been a Comlie man. Na, na, if another house in the town had been mourning I would have held my peace. I’ve had trouble enough myself to have mair feeling; but he’s no frae Comlie nor nearhand. He’s a Dundee man, and I ken naething about him. His name was Brown, like mony mair, and he’s no even married that I ever heard tell of, and it’s to be hoped he’s in a better place.”
With this the new captain’s mother dismissed the old one, and put on her big spectacles. “It’s dated Riga, the fourteenth February, for that’s the port where they were bound. ‘My dear mother, I hope you and Jenny’s in good health as this leaves me. Many and many a time I think of you and the cosy little room, and the flower, and the canary-bird—’ Bless the laddie,” said Mrs. Patterson, stopping abruptly, “he had aye the kindest heart!”
The reader probably, however, will not be so much interested in this letter as Marjory was, who listened and made her comments with thorough sympathy, feeling quite relieved, as was Willie’s mother, by the fact that the dead captain was not a Comlie man. Dundee was large and vague, and far away, and was able enough to mourn her own dead. But as they went down the stairs after their visit was over, Marjory said to her little sister, “We shall be too late for luncheon at home; are you hungry, dear? I think we might go and dine with Aunt Jean.”
“I am a little hungry,” Milly confessed, not without a blush.
“Then run and tell Betty we are coming, and I will go on to the Manse; you can come after me or stay at Aunt Jean’s, as you like.”
“Walk slow, May, and I will make up to you,” cried little Milly, who ran off instantly like a gleam of sunshine, her long fair hair fluttering in the breeze, anxious to be absent as short a time as possible from her sister’s side. Marjory went on slowly making her royal progress through her dominions, casting a smile now and then through the low windows on the ground floor, stopping to nod and say a passing word to some one on an outside stair. The doctor, setting out in his gig on some distant visit, jumped down and crossed the street to speak to her, to ask for Mr. Heriot and Mr. Charles, and tell her how his patients were, of many of whom she had a secondary charge, if not as consulting physician, yet with a responsibility almost as great. “James Tod, poor lad, would be the better of some books,” the doctor said, “and you’re a better deceiver than I am, Miss Heriot; you might persuade old Mrs. Little that your father has some rare wine in his cellar, wine she could not get to buy.”
“You pay me a charming compliment,” said Marjory. “Could you not cheat her yourself with all your powers?”
“She laughed in my face,” said the doctor, who was young, and not very rich, “and asked me how I could get finer wines than other folk? She was sure I might spend my siller better. And poor little Agnes dying before my eyes!”