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

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“If it was any use,” said Margaret, with a sigh.

“Oh, whisht, my bonnie bird. It’s use to show what great folk the Leslies were wance upon a time, and that’s what makes us a’ proud. There’s none in the county that should go out o’ the room or into the room afore you, Miss Margret. You’ve the auldest blood.”

“But what good does that do if I am the youngest girl?” said Margaret, half piqued, half laughing.

She was proud of her race, but the empty halls were chill. She did not wait for any more remarks on Bell’s part, but led the way into her room, which opened off this banqueting-hall, a turret room of a kind of octagon shape, panelled like all the rest. It looked out through its deepest window on entirely a different scene, on the moonlight rising pale on the eastern side, and the whitening of the sea, the tremolar della marina, was in the distance, the silvery glimmer and movement of the great broad line of unpeopled water.

The girl stood and looked out while the old woman lighted the candles on the table. How wide the world was, all full of infinite sky and sea, not to speak of the steady ground under foot, which was so much less great. Margaret looked out, her eyes straying far off to the horizon, the limit beyond which there was more and more water, more and more widening firmament. She was very reluctant to have it shut out. To draw down a blind, and retire within the little round of those walls, what a shrinking and lessening of everything ensued! “But it’s more sheltered like; it’s no so cold and so far,” said Bell, with a little shiver. She was not so fond of the horizon. The thick walls that kept out the cold, the blind that shut out that blue opening into infinity, were prospect enough for Bell. She made her young lady sit down, and undid the loops of her silken hair. This hair was Bell’s pride; so fine, so soft, so delicate in texture, not like the gold wire, all knotted and curly, on Jeanie’s good-looking head, who was the other representative of youth in the house. “Eh, it is a pleasure to get my hands among it,” said Bell, letting the long soft tresses ripple over her old fingers. How proud she was of its length and thickness! She stood and brushed and talked over Margaret’s head, telling her a hundred stories, which the girl, half hearing, half replying, yet wholly absorbed in her own fancies, had yet a certain vague pleasure in as they floated over her.