Marion nodded her little head again and again in astonished acquiescence; but by this time it had dawned upon her that to drive everywhere in “the carriage,” she and Archie alone, would perhaps be still more satisfactory than with the grave countenance beside her of a not altogether understood papa—who did not enter into their fun, or even understood their jokes. The brother and sister accordingly hurried out together well-pleased, and Marion established herself in Rowland’s room at the hotel while Archie ordered the carriage. The girl turned over all her father’s papers, and examined closely the photograph of Evelyn which stood on his mantelpiece. “That’ll be her,” she said, and took it up and carried it to the window to see it better—“but no great thing,” she added under her breath, “to have made such a catch as papa! Dear bless me, she’s a very ordinary woman—nothing to catch the eye. She’ll have plain brown hair, and no colouring to speak of, and not even a brooch or a locket round her neck. What could he see in a woman like that?”
“It’s a nice kind of a face,” said Archie.
“So is Aunty’s a nice kind of a face—and plenty other people—but to catch a man like papa!”
Mrs. Brown had no greater pleasure in life than to see her children go out together in their best clothes, bent upon enjoyment. She stood at the window and watched them, as she did on every such opportunity. It was her way, even of going to church and performing the weekly worship, which was all she thought of in the light of religious observance—to watch them going, dressed in their best, with their shining morning faces, and Marion’s ribbons fluttering in the air, and to laugh with pleasure, and dry her wet eyes, and say “the blessin’ of the Lord upon them!” The humble woman did not want a share in their grandeur, not even to see the sensation they made when they walked into church, two such fine young things. She was content with the sight of them walking away. It was only when she turned her eyes, full of this emotion and delight, upon James Rowland’s disturbed and clouded face, that she began to understand that all was not perfectly, gloriously well.
“Bless me! oh, Jims! a person would think you were not content.”
“If you mean with the children,” he said, “I don’t see any reason I have for being content.”
“Lord bless us!” said Jane, thunderstruck. She added after a moment, “I canna think but it’s just your joke. No to be satisfied, and far more than satisfied! If you’re no just as prood as a man can be of the twa of them—I would just like to know what you want, Jims Rowland. Princes and princesses? but so they are!”
“It is quite just what you say,” he replied, hanging his head. “It’s my fault or it’s the fault of circumstances, that makes a thing very good in one place that is not good at all in another. But never mind that; the thing to be considered is, what is the best way of transplanting them to so different a kind of life.”
“Oh, there is no fears of that,” said Mrs. Brown; “if you were transplanting them, as you say, from your grand life to be just in the ordinar’ as they’ve been with me, I wouldna say but that was hard; but it’s easy, easy to change to grandeur and delight; there’s few but’s capable of that.”
“If it was all grandeur and delight!” said Rowland; “but there is not very much of the first, and perhaps none at all of the other. No delight for them, I fear. A number of rules they will have to give in to, and talk, dull to them, that they will have to listen to, and no fun, as they call it, at all; I don’t know how they will like being buried in a country place.”