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

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“It’s no my fault,” the old woman said, putting out her open palms with a natural gesture of mild despair. “If I were to speak till I was hoarse (and so I have), what would that do to mend the maitter? The maister he turns a deaf ear, though I was to charm ever so wisely; and Miss Margret hersel’—oh, Miss Margret hersel’, if she could learn a’ that a young leddy should, in twa minutes by the clock, it might be done; but hold her to one thing I canna—it wants somebody with more authority than me; and a bonny creature like that, and with a fortune coming till her from her mother! How is she ever to learn the piany, or a word but broad Scots out here?”

Little Margaret cared for such lamentations. She sat softly swinging the heavy chair against the wall, which was not an easy thing to do. She had not the aspect or physiognomy adapted for a hoyden; her features were small and refined; her color more pale than warm, lighted up by evanescent rose-flushes, but never brilliant; her hair singularly fine in texture and abundant in quantity, but of no tint more pronounced than brown, the most ordinary and commonplace of shades. Her face was a cloudy, shadowy little face, but possessed by a smile which came and went in the suddenest way, brightening her and everything about her. No particular art of the toilet aided or hindered the prettiness of her little slight figure. If she was not as God made her, she was at least as Miss Buist in the village made her—in a dress of blue serge, as near the fashion as possible, of which the peculiarity was that it was rather tight where it ought to be loose, and loose where it ought to be tight. But Margaret’s soul had not been awakened to the point of dress, and so long as it did not hurt, she minded little. Her shoes were made, and strongly made, by the village shoemaker; everything about her was of the soil. When she had swung her chair to the wall, she let it drop back again to its place, and swallowed a little yawn as she watched the water brim into the pail.