The little pause he made before that simple word wife was as when a man who has married a second time says “my first wife.”
Mrs Ogilvy was startled and stared; but she did not take any notice of this alarming peculiarity. She said, “I cannot think Susie delicate, Mr Logan. She has none of the air of it. And her mother at her age——”
“Ah, her mother at her age! I must take double care that nothing interferes with Susie. It is an anxious position for a man to have a family to look after that is deprived of a mother’s care.”
“It is so, no doubt,” said Mrs Ogilvy; “but with Susie——”
“Poor thing! who just strains every faculty she has. There are some women who do these kind of things with no appearance of effort,” said Mr Logan, shaking his head a little. “You will have heard there was a marriage in the parish yesterday. They would fain have had it in the church, in their new-fangled way. But I said our auld kirk did not lend itself to that sort of thing, and I would like it better in their own drawing-room, or if they preferred it, mine.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “I heard of it. The English family that have taken the little house near the Dean. I did not think it was big enough to have a drawing-room.”
“Well, an English family is rather a misnomer: they can scarcely be called English, though they come from the south—and a family you can call it no longer, for this was the last daughter, and there’s nothing but Mrs Ainslie herself left.”
“She’s a well-put-on, well-mannered woman, and well-looking too: but I know nothing more about her,” Mrs Ogilvy said.
“She is all that,” replied the minister, with a little fervour unnecessary in the circumstances. “We were at the little entertainment after, Susie and me. Everything was just perfectly done, and nobody neglected, and without a bit of fuss or flutter such as is general in these cases——”
“Do you think it is general?” said Mrs Ogilvy, with that natural and instantaneous impulse of self-defence which is naturally awakened by excessive praise bestowed upon the better methods of a stranger. “We are maybe not much used to grand entertainments in a landward parish like this, where there are not many grand folk.”