“It is not half good enough.”
“Hold your peace, you silly lad! I hope I ken what I’m saying. She’s but lonely, poor thing—no a young person to speak to. It would divert her to see it. I would not forbid you now to give the young leddy the like o’ that in a present. Sir Ludovic’s our landlord, after a’. He’s no an ill landlord, though he’s poor. It is aye a fine thing to be civil, and ye never can tell but what a kind action will meet with its reward. I see no reason why you should not take that to Miss Margret in a present,” Mrs. Glen said.
CHAPTER VII.
Rob had not been so light of heart since he made that momentous decision about his profession which had so strangely changed his life. For the first time since then he felt himself an allowed and authorized person, not in disgrace or under disapprobation of all men, as he had hitherto been; and the permission to carry his drawing of the Kirkton to Miss Margaret “in a present” amused him, while it gave at the same time a certain sanction to his engagement to meet her, and show her the other productions of his pencil. Rob had his wits about him more than Margaret had, though not so much as his mother. He was aware that to ask a young lady to meet him at the burn, for what purpose soever, was not exactly what was becoming, and that the advantage he had taken of their childish friendship was perhaps not quite so “like a gentleman” as he wished to be. He could not, indeed, persuade himself that his mother was any authority in such a question; but still the fact that she thought it quite natural that he should carry on his old relations with Margaret, and even encouraged him to make the young lady a present, gave him a sort of fictitious satisfaction. He would affect to take his mother’s opinion as his authority, if his conduct was called in question, and thus her ignorance was a bulwark to him. He went out again after his broth, and worked diligently all the afternoon, though Mrs. Glen thought it very unnecessary.
“’Twill just spoil it,” she said. “The like of you never knows where to stop: either you do nothing at all, or you do a hantle o’er much.”
But on this point Rob took his own way. Certainly, even when you despise the opinion of those around, it is good to be thought well off. The moral atmosphere was lighter round him, and there was the pleasant prospect of meeting Margaret in the evening, and receiving the delightful incense of her admiration; a more agreeable way of filling up this interval of leisure could not have been devised, had his leisure been the most legitimate, the most natural in the world.
While he sat at his drawing in the breezy afternoon, a further sign of the rehabilitation he had undergone was accorded to him. Voices approaching him through the garden, which lay between the house and the west green, prepared him for visitors, and these voices were too familiar to leave him in doubt who the visitors were. It was the Minister, whom Mrs. Glen was leading to the spot where her son was at work on his drawing. “I’ll no say that I expected much,” said Mrs. Glen, “for I’m not one that thinks everything fine that’s done by my ain. I think I’m a’ the mair hard to please; but, Doctor, when I saw upon the paper the very Kirkton itsel’! Losh me! there wasn’t a house but you would have kent it. Robert Jamieson’s and Hugh Macfarlane’s, just as like as if you had been standing afore them. It clean beats me how a lad can do that, that has had little time for anything but his studies; for, Doctor, I never heard but that my Rob was a good student. He hasna come to a good issue, which is awfu’ mysterious; but a good student he aye was, and there’s no a man that kens who will say me nay.”
“I am well aware of that,” said Dr. Burnside. “It makes it all the more mysterious, as you well say; but let us hope that time and thought will work a change. I’m not one to condemn a young man because he has troubles of mind. We’ve all had our experiences,” the good man said, as he came through the opening in the hedge to the west green, which was nothing more imposing than the “green,” technically so called, in which the farmer’s household dried its clothes—a green, or, to speak more circumstantially, “a washing green,” a square of grass on which the linen could be bleached if necessary, and with posts at each corner for the ropes on which it was suspended to dry, being a necessity of every house in Fife, and throughout Scotland. There was no linen hung out at present to share the breezy green with Rob. He sat on the grass on a three-legged stool he had brought with him; a low hedge ran round the little enclosure, with a little burn purling under its shadow, and beyond were the green fields and the village, with all its reds and blues. Behind him an old ash-tree fluttered its branches and sheltered him from the sun.
“Well, Robert, and how do you do?” said Dr. Burnside. “I have come out to see you, at your mother’s instance. She tells me you’ve developed a great genius for painting. I am very happy to hear of it, but I hope you will not let the siren art lead you away from better things.”
“What are better things?” said Rob; “I don’t know any,” and he got up to respond to the Minister’s salutation. Dr. Burnside shook his head.