“You knew too, mother,” said Marion; “the two little things were always there.”
“Little things!” cried Mrs. Buchanan, almost with a snort—Rodie’s heel, stretched out upon her hand, and now filled up with a strong and seemly web of darning in stout worsted, was quite as big as his father’s. And Elsie was taller than either of the two women by her side. “They were little things with muckle lugs,” she said, with a rather fierce little laugh; “if you think, Elsie, it was right to spy upon the private conversation of your father and mother, that is not my opinion. Do you think I would have spoken to him as I did if I had known you two were there?”
“Mother, about old Mr. Anderson?” cried Marion, meditating; “there could be nothing so private about that.”
She gave them both a look, curious and anxious; Marion took it with the utmost composure, perhaps did not perceive it at all. Elsie, with a wistful but ignorant countenance, looked at her mother, but did not wince. She had no recollection of what that conversation had been.
“Oh, mamma,” she said, “we spying!” with big tears in her eyes.
“I am not saying you meant it,” said her mother; “it was a silly habit, but I must request, Elsie, that it never may happen again.”
“Oh!” cried Elsie, the big tears running over, “he never will come now! He is not caring neither for me nor the finest book that ever was written. There is no fear, mother. It breaks my heart to sit there my lane, and Rodie never will come now!”
“You are a silly thing,” said Mrs. Buchanan; “it is not to be expected, a stirring laddie. Far better for him to be out stretching his limbs than poring over a book. But I can understand, too, it’s a disappointment to you.”
“Oh, a disappointment!” Elsie cried, covering her face with her hands: the word was so inadequate.
To be disappointed was not to get a new frock when you want it, or something else, unworthy of a thought: but to be forsaken by your own brother! You wanted for that a much bigger word.