Читать книгу The Primrose Path: A Chapter in the Annals of the Kingdom of Fife онлайн

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“Oh no, papa; but I thought perhaps because he was not—the same as us—because he was only—the farmer’s son.”

“This is wisdom; this is social science: this is worthy of Jean and Grace,” said Sir Ludovic. “My little Peggy! I do not know, my child. Is this all out of your own head?”

At this Margaret drooped a little, with one of her usual overwhelming blushes. “It was Bell,” she said; but was it indeed all Bell? Some instinct in her had made a more penetrating suggestion, but she could not tell this to her father. She waited with downcast eyes for his reply.

“Ah, it was Bell. I am glad my little Peggy was not so clever and so far-seeing; now run and play, my little girl, run away and play,” he said, dismissing her in his usual tone. She had roused him at last to his ordinary mood, and neither he nor she thought more of his desire that she should stay in his sight. Margaret went away with her heart beating to the west chamber, which was her legitimate sitting-room. She was half ashamed of her own fears about Rob, which her father had treated so lightly. Was it entirely Bell that had put it into her head that this new visitor might be objected to? And was it entirely because he was the farmer’s son? Margaret was too much puzzled and confused to be able to answer these questions. She was like a little ship setting out to sea without any pilot. An instinct in her whispered the necessity for guidance, whispered some faint doubts whether this step she was taking was a right one; but what could the little ship do when the man at the helm was so tranquilly careless? At seventeen is one wiser than at seventy-five? It is not only presumptuous, it is irreligious to think so. And when her own faint doubt was laughed at by her father as being of the order of the ideas of Jean and Grace, what could Margaret do but be ashamed of it? Jean and Grace were emblems of the conventional and artificial to Sir Ludovic. He could not speak of them without a laugh, though they were his children; neither did they approve of their father—with some reason it may be thought.