“My bonnie Lily!” he cried.
Perhaps this outburst did her good. She cried for a long time, and all the evening an occasional sob interrupted her voice, like the lingering passion of a child. But Lily, like a child, had to yield to that voice of the practical, the voice of reason. She said no more at least, but sadly assisted at the packing of the portmanteau, which had been brought across the snow somehow from the cottage in which Ronald had found refuge before the storm and all its privileges began.
“I am not going with him,” she said to Robina, when these doleful preparations were over. “You see, there are no preparations made, and you cannot get a house between the terms. You might have minded me of that, Beenie. What is the use of being a person of experience if you cannot tell folk that are apt to forget?”
“I ought to have minded, my bonnie dear,” said Beenie with penitence.
“And it’s a long time till Whit-Sunday; but we’ll need to have patience,” Lily said.
“So we will, my darling bairn,” Beenie replied.
“You say that very cut and dry. You are not surprised; you look as if you had known it all the time.”
“Eh, Miss Lily, my dear, how could I help but ken? Here’s a young gentleman that has little siller, and no the mate that Sir Robert would choose.”
“I wish,” cried Lily, “that Sir Robert was at the bottom of the sea! No, no, I’m wishing him no harm, but, oh, if he only had nothing to do with me!”
“The only thing ye canna do in this world is to change your blood and kin,” said Beenie; “but, oh, Miss Lily, ye must just be real reasonable and think. If he were to take you away, it would spoil a’. He has gotten you for his ain, and you have gotten him for your ain, and nothing can come between you two. But he hasna the siller to give ye such a down-sitting as you should have, and nae house at all possible at this time of the year. No, I’m no way surprised. I just knew that was how it had to be, and Katrin too. It would be just flyin’ in the face of Providence, she says, to take ye away off to Edinburgh, without a place for the sole of your foot, when ye have a’ your uncle’s good house at your disposition, and good living and folk about you that tak’ a great interest in you. Katrin herself she canna bide the thought of losing her bonnie leddy. ‘If Miss Lily goes, I’ll just take my fit in my hand and go away after her,’ she says. But what for should ye go? It will be far more comfortable here.”