“Oh,” said Marjory, with a less vehement blush, “it’s because John Lumsden is so popular in Strathoran—you know that.—Come, let us go and see Kenneth Macalpine.”
They did go; poor Kenneth was feverish and unable for any further excitement, so they spoke a few kindly encouraging words to his mother, and left the room. Mrs. Euphan Morison had retreated to her own apartment, and sat there by the fire sulky and dignified—the doctor had absolutely forbidden her administering to the invalid a favorite preparation of her own which she was sure would cure him.
Marjory and Anne turned to the great, warm, shining kitchen. The patriarch of Oranmore was dozing in a chair by the fire—the old man’s mind was unsettled; he had returned to his native Gaelic, and had been speaking in wandering and incoherent sentences of the church-yard, and the right they had to the graves of their fathers. An aged woman, the grand-aunt of Duncan Roy and Flora, who had brought up the orphans, sat opposite to him, muttering and wringing her withered hands in pain. She had been long afflicted with rheumatism, and the exposure made her aged limbs entirely useless. She had to be lifted into her chair—and aggravating her bodily pain was the anguish of her mind: “The bairns—the bairns! what will become of the bairns?”
The other Macalpine was a feeble woman, widowed and childless, to whom her honorable and kindly kindred had made up, so far as temporal matters went, the loss of husband and of children. She was rocking herself to and fro, and uttering now and then a low unconscious cry, as she brooded over the ruin of her friends, and her own helpless beggary. The firmament was utterly black, for her—she had no strength, no hope.
Marjory and Anne lingered for some time, endeavoring to cheer and comfort these two helpless women. Mrs. Catherine’s maids, carefully superintended by Jacky, had done everything they could to make them comfortable; and before the young ladies left the kitchen, Flora Macalpine had entered, and was at her aunt’s side, telling of the reception Duncan and herself had met with at Woodsmuir, and how Mrs. Ferguson had half promised to take her into the nursery to be “bairn’s-maid” to the little Fergusons. The old woman was a little comforted—very little; for if Flora was away in service, who could take care of her painful, declining years?
Jacky followed Anne and Marjory out of the kitchen. They were absorbed with this matter of the ejectment, and so did not observe her. Marjory drew her companion to the library.
“Do come in here, Anne. I don’t want to go up stairs yet.”
They went in, Jacky following—she seemed determined not to lose the opportunity.