For her part Agnes Anne wrote me reams about Charlotte, but never mentioned a word as to the Maitlands, though she did say that Charlotte was a good deal at Heathknowes, and (a trifle spitefully, perhaps) that she did not know what took her there unless it were to see Uncle Rob! This poor Uncle Rob of ours—his reputation was in everybody’s mouth, certainly. He had been, so they said, a runagate, a night-raker, and in the days of his youth a trifle wild. But now with the shadows of forty deepening upon him, it was not fair that all the hot blood of his teens and twenties should rise up in judgment against him. Still so it was. And the reason of it was, he had not, as he ought, married and settled. For which sin of omission, as the gossips of Eden Valley said, “there was bound to be a reason!”
Charlotte herself did not send a line, excepting always the letters I was to forward to Tom Gallaberry at his farm of Ewebuchts on the Water of Ae. This at the time I judged unkind, but afterwards I found that Cousin Tom had insisted upon it, on the threat of going to her father and telling him the whole affair. For, in spite of all, Cousin Thomas was jealous—as most country lads are of college-bred youths, and he pinned Charlotte carefully down in her correspondence. However, I made him pay his own postages, which was a comfort, and as Agnes Anne and often my father would slip their letters into the same packet, after all I had only the extra weight to pay.
Still, I did think that some of them might have told me something of Irma. But none did, till one great day I got a letter—from whom think you? I give you fifty guesses—well, from my Aunt Jen. And it contained more than all the rest put together, though all unconsciously, and telling me things that I might have gone a long time ignorant of—if she had suspected for a moment I was keen about them.
Heathknowes, this the thirteenth Aprile.
“Dear Nephew Duncan,
“Doubtless you will be having so many letters that you will not be caring for one from a cross auld maid, who is for ever finding fault with you when ye are at home. But who, for all that, does not forget to bear ye up in the arms of her petitions before the Throne—no, night and morning both.
“This is writ to tell you that I have sent ye, by the wish of my mither, one cheese of seven pounds weight good, as we are hearing that you are thinking to try and find something to do in Edinburgh during the summer time. Which will be an advisable thing, if it be the Lord’s will—for faint-a-hait do ye do here except play ill pranks and run the country.
“However, what comes o’t we shall see. Also there is a pig of butter. It may be the better of a trifle more salt, that is, if the weather is onyway warm. So I have put in a little piece of board and ye can work the salt in yourself. Be a good lad, and mind there are those here that are praying for ye to be guided aright. Big towns are awful places for temptation by what they say, and that ye are about the easiest specimen to be tempted, that I have yet seen with these eyes. Howsomever, maybe ye will have gotten grace, or if not that, at least a pickle common-sense, whilk often does as well—or better.
“It’s a Guid’s blessing that ye have been led to stop where ye are. For that lassie Charlotte Anderson is going on a shame to be seen. Actually she is never off our doorstep—fleeing and rinning all hours of the day. At first I thought to mysel’, it was to hear news of you. But she kens as weel as us when the posts come in, besides the letters she gets from Agnes Anne—some that cost as muckle as sevenpence—a ruination and a disgrace!” [Tom Gallaberry must have been prolix that week.] “Then I thought it was maybe some of the lads—for, like it or no, ye had better ken soon as syne, that maiden’s e’e is filled with vanity and the gauds o’ grandeur, disdaining the true onputting of a meek and quiet spirit!
“But, for your comfort, if ye are so far left to yourself as to take comfort in the like—and the bigger fool you—it is no the lads after all. It’s just Irma Maitland!