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

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It was good to have Bell there, to feel the touch of homely love about her, and the sound of the voice which was as familiar as her own soft breath. Bell was pleased too. She was not offended when she perceived that her nursling answered somewhat at random. “What is she but a bairn? and bairns’ ways are wonderful when their bit noddles begin working,” Bell said, with the heavenly tolerance of wise affection. She went out of the room afterward, with her Scotch delicacy, to give Margaret time to say her prayers, then came back and covered her carefully with her hard-working hand, softened miraculously by love. “And the Lord bless my white doo,” the old woman said. There were no kisses or caresses exchanged, which was not the habit of the reserved Scotchwoman; but her hand lingered on the coverlet, “happing” her darling. Summer nights are sweet in Fife, but not overwarm. And thus ended the long midsummer day.

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Robert Glen, whose reappearance had so interested and excited the innocent mind of Margaret Leslie, was no other than the farmer’s son, in point of locality her nearest neighbor, but in every other respect, childhood being fairly over, as far removed from her as if she had been a princess, instead of the child of an impoverished country gentleman. In childhood it had not been so. Little Margaret had played with Rob in the hay-fields, and sat by him while he fished in the burn, and had rides upon the horses he was leading to the water, many a day in that innocent period. She had been as familiar about the farm “as if it had belonged to her,” Mrs. Glen had said, and had shared the noonday “piece” of her little cavalier often enough, as well as his sports. Even Bell had found nothing to say against this intimacy.