Ta-ran-ta-ra! Ta-ran-ta-ra!
Go back, world! go back, and leave the little lass among her dreams, with hearts that love and cherish. Go back, with your false flowers and your gems of paste. Go back, world, that for every ecstasy exacts a pang!
There were three passengers on the coach—the man with the fur collar who sat on the box beside the driver, and the Misses Duff behind. I am sorry now that once I thought to make you smile at the pigeon hens, for to-day I'm in more Christian humor and my heart warms to them, seeing them come safely home from their flight afar from their doo-cot, since they it was who taught me first to make these symbols on the paper, and at their worst they were but a little stupid, like the most of us at times, and always with the best intent. They had been to Edinburgh; they had been gone two weeks—their first adventure in a dozen years. Miss Jean was happy, bringing back with her a new crochet pattern, a book of Views, a tooth gold-filled (she was so proud and spoke of it so often that it is not rude to mention it), and a glow of art she had got from an afternoon tea in a picture-gallery full of works in oil. Amelia's spoils were a phrase that lasted her for years—it was that Edinburgh was “redolent of Robert Louis”—the boast that she had heard the great MacCaskill preach, and got a lesson in the searing of harmless woods with heated pokers. Such are the rewards of travel; I have come home myself with as little for my time and money.
But between them they had brought back something else—something to whisper about lest the man in front should hear, and two or three times to look at as it by in an innocent roll beside the purse in Miss Amelia's reticule. It might have been a serpent in its coils, so timidly they glanced in at it, and snapped the bag shut with a kind of shudder.
“At least it's not a very large one,” whispered Miss Jean, with the old excuse of the unhappy lass who did the deadly sin.
“No,” said her sister, “it may, indeed, be called quite—quite diminutive. The other he showed us was so horribly large and—and vulgar, the very look of it made me almost faint. But oh! I wish we could have dispensed with the horrid necessity. After twe—after so many years it looks like a confession of weakness. I hope there will be no unpleasant talk about it.”
“But you may be sure there will, Amelia Duff,” said her sister. “They'll cast up Barbara Mushet to us; she will always be the perfect teacher—”
“The paragon of all the virtues.”
“And it is such a gossiping place!”
“Indeed it is,” said Miss Amelia. “It is always redolent of—of scandal.”