“AND so, hinny, you’re to be married, and set up in a house of your own; and, ’stead o’ solitude, and a wild moor, and ould Peggy, have all the county wishing ye joy. Eh, weel! I’m an ould fool, and nowght else: I think upon the mistress, and I canna forbear. The bride goes forth with joy and blessing, but the Lord alone He knows what will come to pass thereupon.”
And Peggy, who was standing in the old dining-room—that room so strangely thrilled through, warmed, and brightened with the new life—examining one after another the pretty things which already began to be prepared for Susan’s marriage, suddenly sunk down on a chair by the table, and covered her face, and sobbed aloud.
“But, Peggy, you should have a cheerful word for me,” said Susan—“we have had so much trouble. Things will never happen with me as they did with mamma. For, Peggy,” added the bride, with her honest eyes smiling frank and sure out of the warm blush that rose over her face, “we will trust and help each other through every trouble. Trouble never can be very heavy when there are two of us to bear the load.”
“The Lord knows, and He alone,” said the faithful servant of the house. “I’m ould, and my heart trembles; the like of me cannot see, Miss Susan. I look upon the bride-white, and there’s shadows o’ shrouds and widow’s mourning a’ covered ower and hidden in the bonnie folds. The Lord preserve ye from all ill and trouble that is beyond the strength of man!—and grant to me to depart and be at rest, before ever cloud or shadow comes upon the light o’ my ould eyes!”
Susan was not discouraged in her own undiscourageable hope and happiness even by these melancholy words; but she was grieved for Peggy, who, broken and nervous with her long solitude, was no longer like herself. She came round to the old woman’s side, and put her young arms, which had clung there so often, round Peggy’s neck.
“Do you know Horace is going to give me a fortune, Peggy?” said Susan. “Horace is different, don’t you think, since he has been ill? I thought it would have turned his head to be so rich—but he does not seem to care; he is so much quieter, older than he used to be. I did not suppose he would have felt so much for poor papa.”
Peggy said nothing—but she gave an emphatic shake of her head, and, diverted into a less pathetic channel of thought, dried her eyes. Peggy’s sentiments were changed. It was the younger generation who were now in the ascendant, and Peggy’s magnanimous instincts, falling to the weaker side, turned all her sympathy towards the dead.
“But he is changed, though you shake your head,” said Susan; “and I am to have a fortune—me! Everything is Uncle Edward’s doing. How I wondered when he brought me these India muslins, Peggy—do you remember? I thought you were all crazy when you spoke of me wearing them—and now look here; and I suppose,” said Susan, with womanful satisfaction and vanity, “we shall see the best people in the county at the Grange.”
“And only your right, too,” said Peggy, by way of interjection; for Susan, having fully launched herself, was quite qualified to keep up the discourse.
“Especially when Amelia Stenhouse marries Sir John. I wonder how she can marry that odd old man; and so pretty as she is too—don’t you think she is very, very pretty, Peggy?”