"Let her work on," the Laird said, in great confidence, to his hostess, and there was a fine secret humour in his eyes. "Ay, ay, let her work on: hard work never harmed anybody. And if she brings her bit mailin to the marriage—ye would call it her dowry in the south—in the shape of a bundle of pictures—just as a young Scotch lass brings a chest of drawers or a set of napery—she will not be empty-handed. She can hang them up herself at Denny-mains."
"You are looking too far ahead, sir," says Queen T., with a quiet smile.
"Maybe—maybe," says the Laird, rubbing his hands with a certain proud satisfaction. "We'll see who's right—we will see who is right, ma'am."
Then, at breakfast, he was merry, complaisant, philosophical in turns. He told us that the last vidimus of the affairs of the Burgh of Strathgovan was most satisfactory: assets about 35,000*l.*; liabilities not over 20,000*l.*; there was thus an estimated surplus of no less than 15,000*l*. Why, then, he asked, should certain poor creatures on the Finance Committee make such a work about the merest trifles? Life was not given to man that he should worry himself into a rage about a penny farthing.
"There is a great dale of right down common sense, ma'am," said he, "in that verse that was written by my countryman, Welliam Dunbaur—
Be merry man, and tak not sair in mind
The wavering of this wretched world of sorrow;
To God be humble, to thy friend be kind,
And with thy neighbours gladly lend and borrow;
His chance to-night, it may be thine to-morrow;
Be blythe in heart for any aventúre,
For oft with wise men it has been said aforow,
Without Gladnésse availeth no Treasúre."
But we, who were in the secret, knew that this quotation had nothing in the world to do with the Finance Committee of Strathgovan. The Laird had been comforting himself with these lines. They were a sort of philosophico-poetical justification of himself to himself for his readiness to make these two young people happy by giving up to them Denny-mains.
And no doubt he was still chuckling over the simplicity of this poor girl, when, after breakfast, he found her busily engaged in getting her painting materials on deck.
"Beautiful—beautiful," said he, glancing around. "Ye will make a fine picture out of those mountains, and the mist, and the still sea. What an extraordinary quiet after last night's rain!"
And perhaps he was thinking how well this picture would look in the dining-room at Denny-mains; and how a certain young hostess—no longer pale and fragile, but robust and sun-browned with much driving in a pony-carriage—would take her friends to the picture, and show them Ulva, and Loch-na-Keal, and Ben-More; and tell them how this strange quiet and beauty had followed on a wild night of storm and rain. The world around us was at this moment so quiet that we could hear the twittering of some small bird among the rocks in there at the shore. And the pale, wan, dream-like sea was so perfect a mirror that an absolutely double picture was produced—of the gloomy mountain-masses of Ben-More, amid silver gleams of cloud and motionless wreaths of mist; of the basaltic pillars of the coast nearer at hand—a pale reddish-brown, with here and there a scant sprinkling of grass; of that broad belt of rich orange-yellow seaweed that ran all along the rocks, marking the junction of the world of the land with the water-world below. An absolutely perfect mirror; except when some fish splashed; then the small circles widened out and gradually disappeared; and the surface was as glassy as before.