“My old friend Lyndsay’s wife? I ought not to be pleased with you, madam, for you disappointed a favourite scheme of mine.”
“How could that possibly be?” said Flora.
“I loved that man of yours; I wanted him for a son-in-law. Of course, neither I nor the girls hinted such a wish to him. But had he asked, he would not have been refused.”
“Mrs. Lyndsay!” broke in Mary W., “you must not mind papa’s nonsense. He will say just what he likes. Mr. Lyndsay was always a great favourite with us all; and papa would have his joke at our expense.”
“Well, my young friend has thought fit to please himself, and I am so well pleased with his wife, that she shall sit by the ugly old man; ‘an’ I will ha’ a spate o’ clatter wi’ her to mine ain sel.’”
The more Flora saw of the eccentric old man, the more she admired and respected him. In a little time, she ceased to think him ugly—he was only plain and odd-looking; till at length, like all the rest of Mr. W.’s friends, she almost believed him handsome. When did genius ever fail to leave upon the rudest clay, an impress of its divine origin?
It was with feelings of mutual regret that our emigrants took leave, and for ever, of this talented family. Before the expiration of one short year, that happy group of kind faces had passed out of the world! The sudden death of the younger Mr. W., who was the idol of the family, brought his mother in sorrow to the grave. The girls, by some strange fatality, only survived her a few weeks; and the good old man, bereft of every kindred tie, pined away and died of a broken heart!
Some years after Flora had been settled in Canada, a gentleman from Scotland, who had been acquainted with the W. family, told her that he called upon the old gentleman on a matter of business, a few days after the funeral of his youngest daughter. The old man opened the door: he was shrunk to a skeleton, and a perfect image of woe. When he saw who his visitor was, he shook his thin, wasted hand at him, with a melancholy, impatient gesture, exclaiming, “What brings you here, P——? Leave this death-doomed house! I am too miserable to attend to anything but my own burden of incurable grief.” He called again the following morning. The poor old man was dead!
The next day the emigrants bade farewell to the beautiful capital of Scotland. How gladly would Flora have terminated her earthly pilgrimage in that land of poetry and romance, and spent the rest of her days among its truthful, high-minded, hospitable people! But vain are regrets. The inexorable spirit of progress points onward; and the beings she chooses to be the parents of a new people, in a new land, must fulfil their destiny.
On the 1st of July, 1832, the Lyndsays embarked on board the brig Anne, to seek a new home beyond the Atlantic, and friends in a land of strangers.