“You will just go down to your supper to-night and every night, and have your cracks with Dougal and Katrin, and be as happy as you can, for I am happy too. I am lonely no more. I am just the Lily I used to be before trouble came—oh, better! for it’s finer to be happy again after trouble than when you are just innocent and never have learned what it is.”
“The Lord bless us all!” cried Beenie solemnly, “the bairn speaks as if she had gone, like Eve, into the thickest of the gairden and eaten of the tree——”
“So I have,” said Lily. “I once was just happy like the bairn you call me, and then I was miserable. And now I know the difference, for I’m happy again, and so I will always be.”
“Oh, Miss Lily,” said Beenie, “to say you will always be is just flying in the face of Providence, for there is nobody in this world that is always happy. We would be mair than mortal if we could be sure of that.”
“But I am sure of it,” said Lily, “for what made me miserable was just misjudging a person. I thought I understood, and I didn’t understand. And now I do; and if I were to live to a hundred, I would never make that mistake again. And it lies at the bottom of every thing. I may be ill, I may be poor, I may have other troubles, but I can never, never,” said Lily, placing piously her hands together, “have that unhappiness which is the one that gives bitterness to all the rest—again.”
“My bonnie lady! I wish I knew what you were meaning,” Beenie said.
Lily kept her hands clasped and her head raised a little, as if she were saying a prayer. And then she turned with a graver countenance to her wondering maid. “Do you think,” she said, “that Dougal or Katrin—but I don’t think Katrin—writes to Uncle Robert and tells him every thing I do?”
“Dougal or Katrin write to Sir Robert? But what would they do that for?” said Beenie, with wide-open eyes.
“Well, I don’t know—yes, I do know. I know what has been said, but I don’t believe it. They say that Sir Robert’s servants write every thing to him and tell all I do.”
“You do nothing, Miss Lily. What should they write? What do they ken? They ken nothing. Miss Lily, Sir Robert, he’s a gentleman. Do you think he would set a watch on a bit young creature like you? He may be a hard man, and no considerate, but he is not a man like that.”