“Jacky, what a question! Miss Alice disna tell me.”
Jacky looked at her inquisitively, and finishing her share of the conversation in her own abrupt fashion, shot into the byre to see the ailing cow, from whence she soon after stole into the Tower, where an irksome hour of compulsory stocking-knitting, in the comfortable housekeeper’s-room of Mrs. Euphan Morison, awaited Mrs. Euphan’s reluctant daughter. The room was a very cosy room in all things, but its disagreeable odor of dried and drying herbs; and Jacky, after a reproof from her mother, so habitual that it had sunk into a formula, took her customary seat and work. Bessie joined her, by-and-bye, with some little piece of sewing that she had to do for Miss Aytoun, and Johnnie Halflin, less dignified, betook himself to the kitchen fire, to read, or joke, or doze the evening out.
The time drew near when Mrs. Catherine’s doubts concerning Archibald Sutherland were to be solved. The strong old lady grew nervous on these dim mornings, and opened her letter-bag with a tremor in her hand; but when the latest day had come, there was still no letter from Paris. Impatiently she tossed them out. There were two or three letters of applicants for her vacant farm, the closely-written sheet of home-news for Alice, business-notes of various kinds, but nothing from the prodigal, whose interests lay so near her heart. She lifted them all separately again, turned out the bag—in vain. Her clear eye had made no blunder in its first quick investigation. Mrs. Catherine’s brow darkened. Alice hardly dared to approach timidly, and withdraw her own letter from the little heap. Not that the face of her kinswoman expressed anger, but it bore the impress of some unknown mental struggle, which Alice, in the serene light of her girlish happiness, did not even know by name.
So Alice stole up stairs to the fireside of her bright dressing-room, to read the long mother’s letter, overflowing with tender counsel and affection, and to weave fair dreams—dreams of joy and honor to that gentle mother, and all things pleasant and prosperous to James—round one unacknowledged centre of her own. Pleasant are those bright dream-mists of youthful reverie, with their vague fairy-land of gladness—pleasant to weave their tinted web, indefinitely rich and glorious, over that universe of golden air, with its long withdrawing vistas—the wealthy future of youth.
But Mrs. Catherine sat still alone, her head bent forward, her keen eyes looking into the blank depths of a mirror on the wall, as though, like the hapless lady in the tale, she could read the wished-for tidings there. The door opened slowly. Jacky, with some strange intuitive knowledge of her mistress’s anxiety, had been on the outlook from the window of the west room, and had now glided down stairs to report. Mrs. Catherine raised her head sharply as the girl’s prefatory “If you please!” fell on her ear.
“What ist’, you elf?”
“If you please,” continued Jacky, “it’s Mr. Ferguson, the Strathoran factor, gallopping up the waterside like to break his neck!”
Mrs. Catherine started to her feet.
“Take him to the library—I will be down myself in a moment. Are you lingering, you fairy? Away with you!”
Jacky vanished, and Mrs. Catherine walked hastily through the room.