Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 13

by Unknown

She placed the ring upon her finger, she turned it round again, and gazed on it with admiration. "I should like to wear such a ring," she added.

"Why, hinny, and ye may wear it," said Peter; "for the ring is mine twenty times owre, whatever its value may be, considering what I have done for the laddie."

With an expression of countenance which might be described as something between a smile and a blush, or, as the people north the Tweed very aptly express it, with a "smirk," she slipped the ring upon her finger, saying that it fitted as well as though it had been made for her.

Passion flashed in the eyes of the orphan. His "new mother," as Peter styled her, had done what poor Jenny never ventured to do. He withdrew his hand which he had extended to greet her, and he was turning away sullenly, when his foster-father said, "Stop, Christopher, ye must not go away until you have shaken hands with your mother." And he turned again, and once more extended to her his hand.

"Well," said she, addressing her husband, and putting forth two of her fingers to Christopher, "is it really possible that you have brought up this great boy! What a trouble he must have been—and expense too!"

"Oh, you are quite mistaken," said Peter; "Christopher never cost us the smallest trouble. I have been proud of him and pleased with him, since ever I took him under my roof; and, poor fellow, as to the expense that he has cost me, if I never had seen his face, I wouldna hae been a penny richer to-day, but very possibly poorer; for he has very often amused me wi' his drollery, and keepit me in the house, when, but for him, I would have been down at Ponteland, or somewhere else, getting a glass wi' my neighbours."

Many weeks had not elapsed ere Christopher discovered that his protector who was dead had been succeeded by a living persecutor. A month had not passed when he was not permitted to enter the room where the second Mrs Thornton sat. Before two went round, he was ordered to take his meals with the servants; and he could do nothing with which a fault was not found. He had often, after scraping his shoes for five minutes together, to take them off and examine them, before he durst venture into the passage leading to the kitchen, which was now the only apartment in the house to which he had access.

Peter Thornton beheld the persecution which his adopted son endured; and he expostulated with his better half, that she would treat him more kindly. But she answered him, that he might have children enough of his own to provide for, without becoming a father to those of other people. Now, a stripling that is in love generally says and does many foolish things which he does not wish to have recalled to his recollection after he has turned thirty; but the middle-aged man who is so smitten invariably acts much more foolishly than the stripling. I have smiled to see them combing up their few remaining locks to cover their bald forehead, or carefully pulling away the grey hairs which appeared about their temples, and all to appear young in the eyes of some widowed or matronly divinity. I do not exactly agree with the poet who says—

"Love never strikes but once, that strikes at all!"

for I think, from nineteen to five-and-twenty, there are few men (or women either) who have not felt a peculiar sensation about their hearts which they took to be love, and felt it more than once too, and which ultimately would have become love, but for particular circumstances which broke off the acquaintanceship; and, before five-and-thirty, we forget that such a feeling had existed, and laugh at, or profess to have no patience with, those who are its victims. We should always remember, however, that it is not easy to put an old head upon young shoulders, and think of how we once felt and acted ourselves; and to recollect, also, how happy, how miserable, we were in those days. Love is an abused word. Elderly people turn up their nostrils when they see it in print. They will hardly read a book where the word occurs. They will fling it away, and cry "stuff!" But, if they would look back upon their days of old, they would treat it with more respect. But the second love of your middle-aged men and women—call it doting, or call it by any other name, but do not call it love, for that it is not, and cannot be. Man never knows what love is, until he has experienced the worth of an affectionate wife, who for his sake would suffer all that the world's ills can inflict.