SATAN FINDS
Of course Christmas time soon came, when we collegers had our first vacation, and Fred and I footed it down to Eden Valley. They had been preparing for us, and the puddings, white and black, hung in rows along the high cross-bars in the kitchen.
Everybody was glad to see us, except, as it appeared at first, Miss Irma. I called her Irma when I thought of the round locket with the hair and her mother’s picture in it, also the letters she had sent me—though these were but few, and, for all that was in them, might have been written to the Doctor. But when I returned and met her full in the doorway of my grandmother’s house, she gave me her hand as calmly as if she had clean forgotten all that had ever been between us.
For me, I was all shaken and blushing—a sight to be seen. So much so that Aunt Jen, coming in with the milk for the evening’s porridge, cocked an eye at me curiously. But if Irma felt anything, I am very sure that it did not show on her face. And that is one of the greatest advantages girls have—care or not care, they can always hide it.
My mother shed tears over me. My father took stock of my progress, and asked me for new light on certain passages we had been reading, but soon deserted me with the familiar contemptuous toss of the head, which meant that he must wait for Fred Esquillant. He might have learned by this time. At anything practical I was miles ahead of Freddie, who had no world outside of his classical books. But then my father was of the same type, with, in addition, the power of imparting and enthusing strong in him—his practical side, which Freddie did not possess—indeed, never felt the lack of, much less the ambition to possess. He was content to know. He had no desire to impart his knowledge.
I spent six mornings and five evenings out of my scanty twenty days at the little thicket by the well. But the lilac was leafless now, and the path which led back to the house of Heathknowes empty and deserted.
Once while I was in hiding my Uncle Rob came and stood so long by his water-pails, looking across the hills in the direction of the Craig Farm, that I made sure he had found me out, or was trying for a talk with Miss Irma on his own account.
But Rob, as I might have known, was far too inconstant. As the saying went, “He had a lass for ilka day in the week and twa for the Sabbath.” It is more than likely that his long rumination at the well was the result of uncertainty as to whether it was the turn of Jeannie at the Craig or Bell down by at Parkhill.
At any rate, it had no connection with me, for he went off home with his burden, where presently I could hear him arranging with Eben as to the foddering of the “beasts” and the “bedding” of the horses. For my three uncles kept accounts as to exchanges of work, and were very careful as to balancing them, too—though Rob occasionally “took the loan” of good-tempered Eben without repayment of any sort.
After my fifth solitary vigil among the rustling of the frozen stems and the dank desolation of the icebound copse on the edge of the marsh, I began to go about with a huge affectation of gloom on my face. It was clear that I was being played with. For this I had scorned the red-cheeked dairy-lass at Echobank, and the waved kerchiefs of the baker’s daughter opposite. And the more unhappy and miserable I looked, the closer I drew my inky cloak about me, the gayer, the more light-hearted became Miss Irma.