So Leslie sat there, pausing in her sewing, and gazing idly at the sky, with a girl's quick pensiveness and thick-coming fancies, as she mused.
How blue it was yonder! What glorious clouds! yet the world below was rather stupid and tiresome, and it was hard to say what people toiled so arduously for. There were other lands and other people: should she ever see them? Surely, for she was quite young. She wished they could go in summer 'down the water,' out of this din and dust, to some coast village or lonely loch between lofty purple mountains, such as she had seen when with Mrs. Elliot; papa might spare a few weeks, people no richer did; they had no holidays, and it was so hot and close, and always the same. But she supposed she must be contented, and would go away to cool and compose herself in the crypt of their own cathedral. How grand it was; how solemn the aisles and arches on every side, like forest trees; and then the monuments—what stories she invented for them! St. Mungo's Well! St. Mungo, austere, yet beneficent; with bare feet, cowled head, scarred back, and hardest of all, swept and garnished heart, with his fruitful blessing, 'Let Glasgow flourish.' What would St. Mungo think now of the city of the tree, the fish, and the bell?
This hoar, venerable, beautiful feat of art was to the imprisoned Glasgow girl as St. Paul's to such another isolated imaginative nature.
There was a knock at the street-door; a very decided application of the queer, twisted knocker. Leslie roused herself: not a beggar's tap that; none of the janitors; and this was not Dr. Murdoch's or Dr. Ware's hour: the girl was accurate in taps and footsteps. Some one was shown in; a man's voice was heard greeting "Dr. Bower," before the study door was closed. Leslie started up with pleased surprise,—"Hector Garret of Otter! he will come upstairs to see us; he will tell us how the country is looking; he will bring news from Ferndean," and for the next hour she sat in happy, patient expectation.
Mrs. Bower, a fair, faded, grave woman, came into the room, and sat down with her needlework in the other window.
"Mamma," exclaimed Leslie, "do you know that Hector Garret of Otter is downstairs with papa?"
"Yes, Leslie."
"He never fails to ask for us; don't you think we'll see him here by-and-by?"
"I do not know; it depends upon his engagements."
"I wonder what brings him to Glasgow just now; he must find it so much more agreeable at home," with a little sigh.