But many difficulties beset this daring enterprise of Jenny’s. First, the impossibility of having brought to her the one magnificent gown of gowns—then a fainting of horror at the price—then a sudden bewilderment and wavering, consequent upon the sight of a hundred others as glorious as the first. While Jenny mused and pondered with curved brow and closed lips, two or three very fine gentlemen, looking on with unrestrained amusement, awoke her out of her deliberations, and out of her first awe of themselves, into a very distinct and emphatic fuff of resentment, and Jenny’s decision was made at last somewhat abruptly, in the midst of a smothered explosion of laughter, which sent her hasty short steps pattering out of the shop, in intense wrath. But in spite of Jenny’s expanded nostrils, and scarcely restrainable vituperation, Jenny carried off triumphantly, in her arms, the gown of gowns; and Jenny’s indignation did not lessen the swell of admiring pride with which she contemplated, pressed to her bosom tenderly, the white paper parcel wherein her gift lay hid.
“Ye’ll let me ken how you like this, Miss Menie,” said Jenny, peremptorily, thrusting the parcel into Menie’s hand, at the door of her mother’s room; “and see if some o’ your grand London mantua-makers canna make such a gown out o’t as ye might wear ony place. Take it ben—I’m no wanting ye to look at it here.”
“But what is it?” asked Menie, wonderingly.
“You have naething ado but open it and see,” was the answer; “and ye can put it on on your birthday if you like—that’s the 10th o’ next month—there’s plenty o’ time to get it made—and I’ll gang and ask thae strange folk about the dinner mysel.”
But neither message nor voice could reach Jenny for a full hour thereafter. Jenny was a little afraid of thanks, and could not be discovered in parlour or kitchen, though the whole “flat” grew vocal with her name. Penetrating at last into the depths of the dark closet where Jenny slept, Menie found her seated on her trunk, with her fingers in her ears; but this precaution had evidently been quite ineffectual so far as Jenny’s sharp sense of hearing was concerned. Menie Laurie put her own arms within the projected arm of the follower of the family, and drew her away to her mother’s room. Like a culprit, faintly resisting, Jenny went.
“I’m sure if I had kent ye would have been as pleased,” said Jenny, when she had in some degree recovered herself, “ye might have gotten ane long ago; but ye’ll mind Jenny when ye put it on, and I’m sure it’s my heart’s wish baith it and you may be lang to the fore, when Jenny’s gane and forgotten out o’ mind. ’Deed ay, it’s very bonnie. I kent I was a gey guid judge mysel, and it was the first ane I lighted on, afore we had been out o’ the house ten minutes—it’s been rinning in my head ever since then.”
“But, Jenny, it must have been very expensive,” said Mrs Laurie, quickly.
“I warrant it was nae cheaper than they could help,” said Jenny. “Eh! mem, the manners o’ them—and a’ dressed out like gentlemen, too. I thought the first ane that came to me was a placed minister, at the very least; and to see the breeding o’ them, nae better than as mony hinds! Na, I would like to see the cottar lad in a’ Kirklands that would have daured to make his laugh o’ me!”
A few days’ delay in Edinburgh gave Mrs Laurie space and opportunity of settling various little matters of business, which were necessary for the comfort of their removal; and then the little family embarked in the new steamer, which had but lately superseded the smack, with some such feelings of forlornness and excitement as Australian emigrants might have in these days. Jenny set herself down firmly in a corner of the deck, with her back against the bulwark of the ship, and her eyes tenaciously fixed upon a coil of rope near at hand. Jenny had a vague idea that this might be something serviceable in case of shipwreck, and with jealous care she watched it; a boat, too, swayed gently in its place above her—there was a certain security in being near it; but Jenny’s soul was troubled to see Menie wandering hither and thither upon the sunny deck, and her mother quietly reading by the cabin door. Jenny thought it something like a tempting of Providence to read a book securely in this frail ark, which a sudden caprice of uncertain wind and sea might throw in a moment into mortal peril.
But calm and fair as ever Mayday shone, this quiet morning brightened into noon, and their vessel rustled bravely through the Firth, skirting the southern shore. Past every lingering suburban roof—past the sea-bathing houses, quiet on the sands—gliding by the foot of green North-Berwick Law—passing like a shadow across the gloomy Bass, where it broods upon the sea, like a cairn of memorial stones over its martyrs dead—past the mouldering might of old Tantallon, sending a roll of white foam up upon those little coves of Berwickshire, which here and there open up a momentary glimpse of red-roofed fisher-houses, and fisher cobbles resting on the beach under shelter of the high braes and fretted rocks of the coast. Menie Laurie, leaning over the side, looks almost wistfully sometimes at those rude little houses, lying serene among the rocks like a sea-bird’s nest. Many a smuggler’s romance—many a story of shipwreck and daring bravery, must dwell about this shore; the young traveller only sees how the tiled roof glows against the rock which lends its friendly support behind—how the stony path leads downward to the boat—how the wife at the cottage door looks out, shading her eyes with her hands, and the fisher bairns shout along the sea margin, where only feet amphibious could find footing, and clap their hands in honour of the new wonder, still unfamiliar to their coast. Something chill comes over Menie as her eye lingers on these wild rock-cradled hamlets, so far apart from all the world. Stronger waves of the ocean are breaking here upon the beach, and scarcely a house among them has not lost a father or son at sea; yet there steals a thrill of envy upon the young voyager as one by one they disappear out of her sight. So many homes, rude though their kind is, and wild their place—but as for Menie Laurie, and Menie Laurie’s mother, they are leaving home behind.