The housekeeper shook her head solemnly. “Na, na! Mr. Tom wasna a man to marry; and oh, to think the auld house should depend upon a little bairn.”
Then the good woman put her apron to her eyes. Verna watched her every look and movement, and already her attention and curiosity were awakened; but she would not show her ignorance of the family affairs; and she was glad to get Mrs. Simpson out of the room, fearing the outburst which was coming. It came almost before she had closed the door upon the housekeeper’s ample gown.
“Oh you cruel, cruel Verna!” cried the young widow. “Oh you barbarous, unfeeling thing! a cap! I will never wear a cap; as if it was not bad enough to lose Charlie, and come home here like this, and cry my eyes out, and have to please everybody; instead of my own house, and being my own mistress, as I was while dear Charlie was living; but to put on a hideous cap—I will not, I will not! With light hair it is dreadful; I will rather die!”
CHAPTER XVII.
The situation of the little party of strangers in the west wing of Pitcomlie for the week after their arrival was strange enough. They were in the house, but not of it. Partly on pretence of their fatigue, partly because of the agitated condition of the family, they were not asked to go down stairs, and it was the second day before Marjory even paid them a visit. On the afternoon of their arrival Mr. Charles went solemnly upstairs, and kissed the babies, and shook hands with his new niece. Mrs. Charles had been carefully tutored by her sister, and she had so many grievances on hand that she was ready to cry at a moment’s notice. First and foremost of these was the cap, which had been found in the village, a hideous head-dress indeed, made for some elderly village matron, which drowned Matilda’s poor pretty face within its awful circlet. She resisted with all her might, and cried, and struggled; but having no one to back her, gave in to superior force at last, as was inevitable.
“The uglier it is, the more they will feel that you are in earnest,” said Verna, with an energy that carried everything before it.
And when Mr. Charles came in and paid his respects solemnly, his heart smote him for all the evil things he had said about her, when he saw the tears stealing from under Matilda’s long eyelashes, and that piteous quiver of her lip.
“Some people do themselves much injustice by their style of writing letters,” he said to Fanshawe, that evening. “She may not be very wise, but she has plenty of feeling.”
She scarcely spoke at all during this interview, but cried and gave him a look of hopeless yet affecting sorrow, which went direct to the old man’s heart. The little boy was disobedient, but that was nothing to be wondered at after a long sea-voyage and all that had happened; and as clever Verna thought, the terrible widow’s cap intended for old Mrs. Williamson at the post-office, gave the young widow worship in the eyes of all who beheld her. Verna won herself worship in quite a different way. She put on the most becoming hat she had, and strayed down in the evening to get a little air. The first evening she saw no one. The second, Mr. Fanshawe came out and walked with her round the lawn, where she had seen Marjory first.
“How is Miss Heriot?” she asked, anxiously; “is she better? Was she so much devoted to her father? I am very, very sorry for her; but my poor Matty wants comfort too.”