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

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While these events were going on in the long room, and up the spiral stairs, thoughts not less important to her than those that moved her young mistress were going on in the head of Jeanie, the young maid-servant at Earl’s-hall. Jeanie had been chosen as her assistant by Bell on account of her excellent character and antecedents, and the credit and respectability of all belonging to her. “An honest man’s daughter,” Bell said, “a man just by-ordinary;” and the girl herself was so well spoken of, so pretty spoken in her own person, with such an artless modesty in the soft chant of her voice, true Fife and of the East Neuk, that there had been nothing to say against the wisdom of the choice. Jeanie was always smiling, always good-humored, fresh as a rose and as clean, singing softly about her work, with the natural freedom yet sweet respectfulness which makes a Scotch lass so ingratiating an attendant. Jeanie could not have waited even upon a stranger without a certain tender anxiety and affectionate interest—a desire not only to please, but to “pleasure” the object of her cares, i. e., to give them pleasure with sympathetic divining of all they wanted. Whether it was her “place” or not to do one thing or another, what did it matter? Her own genuine pleasure in the cleanness and neatness she spread round her, and in the comfort of those she served, reached the length of an emotion. It did her heart good to bring order out of chaos, to make dimness bright, and to clear away stain and spot out of her way. She had been two years at Earl’s-hall, and before that had been away as far as the west country, where her mother’s friends were. Jeanie was her father’s only daughter, and great was his comfort and rejoicing when she came back to be so near him; for John Robertson was not well enough off to keep her with him at home, nor could he have thought it good for Jeanie to keep her in his little cottage “learning naething,” as he said. Perhaps there had risen upon Jeanie’s bright countenance some cloud of uneasiness during these recent days; at least it had occurred to Bell, she could scarcely tell how, that something more than usual was in the girl’s mind. “It’ll do you good to go and have a crack with your father,” she had said, the day after Margaret’s second meeting with Rob Glen. Perhaps Bell wanted to have her young lady all to herself—perhaps it was only consideration for Jeanie.