The Dew of Their Youth

by S. R. Crockett

But here, looking from the door out of the sheltering arms of Marnhoul wood into the peace of the Valley, the ear could discern only the hum of the pirn-mill buzzing like a giant insect in the greenest of the shade, and farther off the whisper of the sea on the beaches and coves about Killantringan.

Now we had taken rather a roundabout road and rested some nights on the way, for I had business at Glasgow—a great and notable professor to visit at the college, and in the library several manuscripts to consult. So Irma remained with the Wondrous Duncan the Second at the inn of the White Horse, where the coach stopped.

When I came back I thought that Irma’s face looked a trifle flushed. I discovered that, having asked the hostler to polish her shoes, he had refused with the rudeness common to his class when only rooms of the cheaper sort are engaged. Whereupon Irma, who would not let her temper get the better of her, had forthwith gone down to the pantry, taken the utensils and done them herself.

I said not much to her, but to the landlord and especially to the man himself I expressed myself with fulness and a vigour which the latter, at least, was not likely to forget for some time.

It was as well, however, that my grandmother was not there. For in that case murder might have been done, had she known of the scullion’s answer and what Irma had done. Well also, on the whole, for us that she had refused to keep us company. For having been only once in a great city in her life, and never likely to be there again, Mary Lyon made the most of her time. She had had two trunks when she came to our gate. Four would not have held all that she travelled with on her way back. And when we remonstrated on the cost, she said, “Oh, fidget! ’Tis many a day since I cost anything to speak of to the goodman. He can brave and weel afford to pay for a trifle o’ luggage.”

Accordingly she never passed a fruit stall without yearning to buy the entire stock-in-trade “for the neighbours that have never seen siccan a thing as a sweet orange in their lives—lemons being the more marketable commodity in Eden Valley.”

She had also as many commissions, for which she looked to be paid, as if she had been a commercial traveller. There were half-a-dozen “swatches” to be matched for Aunt Jen—cloth to supply missing “breadths,” yarn to mend the toes of stockings, ribbons which would transform the ancient dingy bonnet into a wonder of beauty on the day of the summer communion. She had “patterns” to buy dress-lengths of—from the byre-lasses brown or drab to stand the stress of out-of-door—checked blue and white for the daintier dairy-worker among her sweet milk and cheese.

Even groceries, and a taste of the stuff they sell in town for “bacon ham”—to be sniffed at and to become the butt for all the goodwives in the parish—no tea, for Mary Lyon knew where that could be got better and cheaper, but a Pilgrim’s Progress for a neighbour lad who was known to be fond of the reading and deserved to be encouraged—lastly, as a vast secret, a gold wedding-ring which could not be bought without talk in Eden Valley itself. Grandmother did not tell us for whom this was intended. Nor did we know, till the little smile lurking at the corner of her mouth revealed the mystery, when Agnes Anne came home from the kirk and named who had been “cried” that day. It was no other than our sly Eben—and Miss Gertrude Greensleeves was the name of the bride—far too young for him, of course, but—he had taken his mother into his confidence and not a man of us dared say a word. Doubtless the women did, but even they not in the hearing of Mary Lyon.

But now we were at rest, and quite ten days ago grandmother had arrived with her cargo. The commissions were all distributed. The parish had had a solid week to get over its amazement. And, to put all in the background, there had been a successful run into Portowarren and another the same night to Balcary—a thing not often done in the very height of summer. Yet, because the preventive men were not expecting it, perhaps safer then than at any other time.

And above all and swamping all the endless talk of a busy, heartsome farm-town! Ah, how good it was. Even the little god in the “ben” room, Master Duncan Maitland MacAlpine, had times and seasons without a worshipper, all because there was a young farmer’s son in the kitchen telling of his experiences “among the hills,” with the gaugers behind them, and the morn breaking fast ahead.