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

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“Tt-tt-tt,” says old Bell. “If ever there was a masterful miss and an ill-willy, and ane that will have her ain way!”

“How can I be masterful and a miss too?” said the girl, laughing. Her arm grew tired, however, with the pumping, and she left off before the vessel was half full. “There!” she said, “I’ll cry on Jeanie to do the rest for you. I’m tired now.”

“Oh, Miss Margret! but you need not cry upon Jeanie. I am fit enough, though I’m old, to do that much for mysel’.”

“It’s the sun has got into my eyes,” said the girl; and she strayed away into the shade, and seated herself upon a heavy old wooden chair that had been placed close to the door. The sun would not have seemed unbearably hot to any one accustomed to his warmer sway; but Margaret Leslie was not used to overmuch sunshine, and what she called the glare fatigued her. Such a mild glare as it was—a suffusion of soft light, more regretful at giving so little than triumphant in delight over its universal victory! It had been rainy weather, and the light had a wistful suddenness in it, like a smile in wet eyes. Margaret withdrew into the shade. She was a girl of seventeen or so, the only daughter of this old gray house, the only blossom of youth about it except Jeanie in the kitchen, whom she did not “cry on” to help old Bell—not so much because old Bell declined the help, but because she herself forgot next moment all about it. Margaret had no idea that to say she would “cry upon” Jeanie was not the best English in the world. She was as entirely and honestly of the soil as her maid was; a little more careful, perhaps, of her dialect; not “broad” indeed, in her use of the vernacular, because of the old father up-stairs, but with an accent which would make a young lady of Fife of the present day shiver, and a proud and determined aversion to the “high English” which only disapproving visitors ever spoke—ladies who looked with alarm upon her, suggesting schools and governesses. Nowhere could there have been found a more utterly neglected girl than Margaret, whom nobody, except old Bell, had ever taken any care of, all her life. Bell had been very careful of her—had kept her feet warm and her head cool, had seen that she ate her porridge all the mornings of her childhood, and that there were no holes in her stockings; but what more could Bell do? She discoursed her young mistress continually, putting all kinds of homely wisdom into her head; but she could not teach her French, or to play the “piany,” which were the only accomplishments of which Bell was even aware.