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

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“And I am Scotch,” she said. “How could I speak otherwise? They were always going on about something. Either it was my shoulders, or it was my hair, or it was my tongue—”

“Your tongue! My Peggy, your idioms are strange, it must be allowed; but never mind. What had they to say against your hair? It is very pretty hair. I don’t see any ground to find fault there.”

“Oh, it was not in the fashion,” said Margaret. “You know, papa, you like it smooth, and that is not the fashion now; it ought to be all towzy, like my little dog, and hanging in my eyes.”

“The Lord preserve us!” said old John. He was in the habit of giving utterance to his sentiments as constrained by some internal movement plus fort que lui; and no one ever interfered with this habit of his. “What next?” said the old man, with a shrug of his shoulders behind his master’s chair.

“Then you must continue to be old-fashioned so long as I live,” said Sir Ludovic. “Your sisters are very well-meaning women, my Peggy; but even when you are as clever as Mrs. Bellingham and as wise as Miss Leslie, you will not have fathomed everything. We’ll leave the philosophy to them, my little woman, and you and I will manage the hair-dressing. That is evidently the point in which our genius lies.”