So saying, Jenny went briskly to her kitchen, to set on foot immediate preparations for the removal, leaving her “guid counsel” for Mrs Laurie’s consideration. Mrs Laurie found little time to deliberate. She had few distant friends, and no great range of correspondents at any time, and another perusal of Miss Annie Laurie’s epistle set her down to answer it with a puzzled face. A little amusement, a little impatience, a little annoyance, drew together the incipient curve on Mrs Laurie’s brow, and Jenny’s advice got no such justice at her hands as would have satisfied Jenny, and was summarily dismissed when its time of consideration came.
CHAPTER VII.
“Johnnie Lithgow exists no longer.” The words chased the colour from Menie Laurie’s cheek, and drew a pitying exclamation from her lips. Alas, for Johnnie Lithgow’s mourning mother! But Menie read on and laughed, and was consoled. “There is no such person known about the office of the great paper; but Mr Lythgoe, the rising critic, the leader of popular judgments, and writer of popular articles, is fast growing into fame and notice. The days of the compositor are over, and I fear the author must be a little troubled about the plebeian family who once rejoiced the poor young printer’s heart. Yet the heart remains a very good heart, my dear Menie—vain, perhaps, and a little fickle and wavering, not quite knowing its own mind, but a very simple kindly heart in the main, and sure to come back to all the natural duties and loves. I give you full warrant to comfort the mother. Johnnie has been somewhat fêted and lionised of late, and is not, perhaps, at present exactly what our sober unexcitable friends call steady. His head is turned with the unusual attention he has been receiving, and perhaps a little salutary humiliation may be necessary to bring him down again; but I have no fear of him in the end. He is very clever, writes extremely well, and is one of the most wise and sensible of men—in print. I almost wonder that I have not mentioned him to you sooner, for he and I have seen a good deal of each other of late, and Johnnie is a very good fellow, I assure you—not without natural refinement, and very fresh, and hearty, and genial; moreover, a rising man, as the common slang goes, and one who has made a wonderful leap in a very short time; so we must pardon him in his first elation if he seems a little negligent of his friends.”
A slight flush of colour ran wavering over Menie’s cheek as “a little salutary humiliation may be necessary” she repeated under her breath, and, starting at the sound of her own voice, looked round guiltily, as if in terror lest she had been overheard. But there was no one to overhear—no one but her own heart, which, suddenly startled out of its quiet, looks round too with a timid, troubled glance, as if a ghost had crossed its line of vision, and hears these words echoing softly among all the trees. Well, there is no harm in the words, but Menie feels as if, in whispering them, she had betrayed some secret of her betrothed, and with an uneasy step and clouded face she turns away.
Why?—or what has Randall done to call this shadow up on Menie Laurie’s way? But Menie Laurie neither could or would tell, and only feels a cloud of vague vexation and unexplainable displeasure rise slowly up upon her heart.
Yet it is no very long time till Mrs Laurie hears the news, unshadowed by any dissatisfaction, and very soon after Menie is speeding along the Kirklands road restored to all her usual cloudlessness, though it happens somehow, that, after a second bold plunge at it in the stillness of her own room, which reddened Menie’s cheek again with involuntary anger, she skips this objectionable paragraph in Randall’s letter, and, asking herself half audibly, what Johnnie Lithgow is to her, solaces herself out of her uneasiness by Randall’s exultation over her own last letter. For Randall is most heartily and cordially rejoiced to think of having his betrothed so near him—there can be no doubt of that.
And here upon the hillside path, almost like one of those same delicate beechen boughs which wave over its summit, July Home comes fluttering down before the wind—her soft uncertain feet scarcely touching the ground, as you can think—her brown dress waving—her silky hair betraying itself as usual, astray upon her shoulders. Down comes July, not without a stumble now and then, over boulder or bramble, but looking very much as if she floated on the sweet atmosphere which streams down fresh and full from the top of the hill, and the elastic spring air could bear her well enough upon its sunny current for all the weight she has. Very simple are the girlish salutations exchanged when the friends meet. “Eh, Menie, where are you going?” and “Is that you, July?—you can come with me.”
And now the road has two shadows upon it instead of one, and a murmur of low-toned voices running like a hidden tinkle of water along the hedgerow’s side. “Johnnie Lithgow! eh, I’m glad he’s turned clever,” said little July; “he used to come up the hill at nights when nobody ever played with me; and I think, Menie—you’ll no be angry?—he had more patience than Randall, for I mind him once carrying me, when I was just a little thing, all the way round the wood to the Resting Stane, to see the sunset, and minding what I said too, though I was so wee. I’m glad, Menie—I’m sure I’m very glad; but Randall, being clever himself, might have told us about Johnnie Lithgow before.”
“You never can think that Johnnie Lithgow is as clever as Randall,” said Menie, indignantly. “That’s not what I mean either. Randall’s not clever, July. You need not look so strange at me. Clever! Jenny’s clever; I’m clever myself at some things; but Randall—I call Randall a genius, July.”
And Menie raised loftily the face which was now glowing with a flash of affectionate pride. With a little awe July assented; but July still in her inmost heart asserted Randall to be clever, and rather avoided a discussion of this perplexing word genius, which July did not feel herself quite competent to define or understand.