“But there stands Peter—no very blithe bridegroom, methinks!” said I, as my eye rested on the tall and usually jolly young farmer, musing disconsolately in his cattle-yard over what appeared to be the body of a dead cow. He started on seeing the minister, as if ashamed of his sorrow or its cause, and came forward to meet us, struggling to adapt his countenance a little better to his circumstances.
“Well, Peter,” said the minister, frankly extending his hand, “and so I am to wish you joy! I thought when I gave you your name, five-and-twenty years ago, if it pleased God to spare me, to have given you your helpmate also; but what signifies it by whom the knot is tied, if true love and the blessing of God go with it? Nay, never hang your head, Peter; but tell me, before we beat up the young gudewife’s quarters, what you were leaning over so wae-like when we rode forward.”
“’Od, sir,” cried Peter, reddening up, “it wasna the value o’ the beast, though she was the best cow in my mother’s byre, but the way I lost her, that pat me a wee out o’ tune. My Jessie (for I maunna ca’ her gudewife, it seems, nor mistress neither) is an ill guide o’ kye, ay, and what’s waur, o’ lasses. We had a tea-drinking last night, nae doubt, as new-married folk should; and what for no?—I’se warrant my mither had them too in her daft days. But she didna keep the house asteer the hale night wi’ fiddles and dancin’, and it neither New Year nor Hansel Monday; nor she didna lie in her bed till aught or nine o’clock, as my Jess does; na, nor yet”——
“But what has all this to do with the loss of your cow, Peter?”
“Ower muckle, sir; ower muckle. The lasses and lads liket reels as weel as their mistress, and whisky a hantle better. They a’ sleepit in, and mysel among the lave. Nae mortal ever lookit the airt that puir Blue Bell was in, and her at the very calving; and this morning, when the byre-door was opened, she was lying stiff and stark, wi’ a dead calf beside her. It’s no the cow, sir (though it was but the last market I had the offer o’ fifteen pund for her), it’s the thought that she was sae sair neglected amang me, and my Jess, and her tawpies o’ lasses.”
“Come, come, Peter,” said the good minister, “you seem to have been as much to blame as the rest; and as for your young town bride, she maun creep, as the auld wives say, before she can gang. Country thrift can no more be learnt in a day than town breeding; and of that your wife, they say, has her share.”
“Ower muckle, may be,” was the half-muttered reply, as he marshalled us into the house. The “ben” end of the old-fashioned farm-house, which, during the primitive sway of Peter’s mother, had exhibited the usual decorations of an aumrie, a clock, and a pair of press-beds, with a clean swept ingle, and carefully sanded floor, had undergone a metamorphosis not less violent than some of Ovid’s or Harlequin’s. The “aumrie” had given place to a satin-wood work-table, the clock to a mirror, and the press-beds (whose removal no one could regret) to that object of Hannah’s direst vituperations—the pianoforte; while the fire-place revelled in all the summer luxury of elaborately twisted shavings, and the once sanded floor was covered with an already soiled and faded carpet, to whose delicate colours Peter, fresh from the clay furrows, and his two sheep-dogs dripping from the pond, had nearly proved equally fatal.
In this sanctum sanctorum sat the really pretty bride, in all the dignity of outraged feeling which ignorance of life and a lavish perusal of romances could inspire, on witnessing the first cloud on her usually good-natured husband’s brow. She hastily cleared up her ruffled looks, gave the minister a cordial, though somewhat affected welcome, and dropped me a curtsey which twenty years’ rustication enabled me very inadequately to return.
The good pastor bent on this new lamb of his fold a benignant yet searching glance, and seemed watching where, amid the fluent small talk which succeeded, he might edge in a word of playful yet serious import to the happiness of the youthful pair. The bride was stretching forth her hand with all the dignity of her new station, to ring the bell for cake and wine, when Peter (whose spleen was evidently waiting for a vent), hastily starting up, cried out, “Mistress! if ye’re ower grand to serve the minister yoursel, there’s ane ’ill be proud to do’t. There shall nae quean fill a glass for him in this house while it ca’s me master. My mither wad hae served him on her bended knees, gin he wad hae let her; and ye think it ower muckle to bring ben the bridal bread to him! Oh, Jess, Jess! I canna awa wi’ your town ways and town airs.”
The bride coloured and pouted; but there gathered a large drop in her eye, and the pastor hailed it as an earnest of future concession. He took her hand kindly, and put it into Peter’s not reluctant one. “‘Spring showers make May flowers,’ my dear lassie, says the old proverb, and I trust out o’ these little clouds will spring your future happiness. You, Jessy, have chosen an honest, worthy, kind-hearted, country husband, whose love will be well worth the sacrifice of a few second-hand graces. And you, Peter, have taken, for better and for worse, a lassie, in whose eye, in spite of foreign airs, I read a heart to be won by kindness. Bear and forbear, my dear bairns—let each be apter to yield than the other to exact. You are both travelling to a better country; see that ye fall not out by the way.”