CHAPTER X.

‘A’ WILL BE RICHT AGAIN WHEN JAMIE HE’S COME BACK.’

At last, when the late harvest of those days was nearly over, when Balcairnie was ‘grieving,’ or ‘leading,’ or ‘forking’ in the fields and in the stack-yards both of Balcairnie and Drumsheugh, before the first hoar frost had melted in the early rays of the morning sun, till it was lying again thick and white all around, like the manna of the children of Israel, in the moon-light; when the mellow russet and yellow apples had long replaced the delicate pink-and-white apple blossom, and there were no lingering flowers in the gardens save sun-flowers, marigolds, and daisies, Drumsheugh and his mother were to come home--not ‘late, late in the gloamin,’ like Kilmeny, but at a more rational hour of the afternoon. It would permit a four o’clock tea, or ‘fower hours,’ something perfectly distinct from a modern kettledrum. At the ‘fower hours’ Peggy’s famous pie was to serve as the _pièce de résistance_, well balanced by ale and glenlivat. Her maiden efforts in preserves, elderflower and elderberry, currant, and ginger wines were to keep company with the butter-bannocks and cakes and honey, the loaf-bread, the short-bread and the diet-loaf which suited the old lady’s green tea. The provision was not too ample for the large execution sanguinely expected from the ravenous appetites of the travellers. Balcairnie, too, had donned his best coat in honour of the occasion, hurrying from the harvest-field at the first word of warning that a yellow post-chaise was seen on the road to Drumsheugh.

It had not been altogether the laird’s careless procrastination, or any reluctance to return home from a growing fear of what he was to find there, which had delayed the mother and son so long. There had been chases by privateers, contrary winds, an illness of Mrs. Ramsay’s, an accident to the London coach, uncontrollable impediments turning up in succession and baffling the travellers.

But at last Peggy wore, under happy auspices, one of the new gowns which had been ordered from Baldie Fuggie. It had been carefully cut out, made up, and toned down under Primrose’s superintendence; next it had been brightened up by dexterous touches here and there, of lawn neckerchief and apron, and bonnie breast-knot. It was a very fair and gentle-looking young lady, whose trim feet in their rosetted shoes, under the dainty skirt well tucked through the pocket-hole, tripped so lightly--though the speed was tremulous, from her post by the decapitated stone pillars at the head of the fir avenue, into the middle of the rough road--along which she had jogged with Balcairnie on the wintry night of her dismal home-coming--to take that first place at the chaise door to which she was entitled.

Old Mrs. Ramsay’s head, well protected with wraps, though it still wanted a month to Martinmas, was poked out of the window on her side in anticipation of her arrival. ‘Eh! can that be you, Peggy, my love?’ she cried with glad surprise. ‘You’re looking so well I would hardly have known you.’

But when Drumsheugh leapt from the chaise and took his wife in his arms, he said the very reverse, though he had not even heard his mother’s comment, and had no thought of contradicting her. ‘I’m glad to find my Peggy the same,’ he said fervently, ‘the very same as when I left her. I’m far gladder of that than to be at hame again, though that is good, too. I have not seen any leddy like you, Peggy, my doo, since I quitted Drumsheugh.’

Peggy looked uplifted to the sky as at the very words she would have liked best to hear.

‘The ungrateful man!’ said Primrose Ramsay to Balcairnie, when the two were comparing notes together in the recess of one of the drawing-room windows before he left. ‘The ungrateful woman!’ after all I have done to make her liker him and her place henceforth.’

He was not sure whether she was most in jest or earnest, and there was a strain of wistfulness in his reply. ‘But did you not see how his speech pleased her, Miss Ramsay? She would rather have been told she was the same to him than that she had grown like the queen on the throne; yet she would not have been the same to him if she had not changed with the weeks and months, thanks to you. Do you hear me, madam, or do you suppose I’m contradicting myself? He has been learning, almost without his knowledge, to see her with other een all the time he has been away, and if she had come upon him, just as she used to be, he would have been startled and flegged. It is these other een which the improvement in her fits so well, that he was as proud and happy as a king to see at a glance she was as bonnie and dear to him as ever. Except for you, Miss Ramsay, this gude end would never have come to pass.’

‘I’m afraid you’re a flatterer, Balcairnie,’ said Primrose demurely.

‘Na, na,’ he said hastily, with some trouble and agitation laying hold of him, in consequence of her accusation, ‘I have no saft words. I’m but a yeoman-farmer. Nobody’s likely to ettle to rub me down--or up,’ he finished, a little sorely.

‘Don’t let them, if there is anybody so conceited and impertinent as to try,’ she said quickly, with a curious tone of half-smothered indignation against him rather than against herself, mingling with her half fun; ‘there is no call for it. You are best as you are; you could not be better. But why do you let me speak like that? Why do you need to be told such a plain truth?’

A rush of colour flew into his face, a glow into his eyes; still he paused doubtfully, as at news too good to be believed. ‘Forgive me for being a gowk,’ he said humbly, ‘but do you really mean I could not be better to you, Miss Ramsay?’

She bit her lips, frowned, laughed, and nodded, while she grew as red as fire herself. ‘Why do you make me say and do such things?’ she repeated, with an impatient tap of her foot.

‘Well,’ he said eagerly, ‘I’ve gear enough, and if I were to buy a place like this, and be a laird like Drumsheugh, you and me would never be equal in anything worth counting--never. Nobody kens that better than myself; but there would be less outward odds, less descent in the sight of the world for you.’

‘Please yourself. I daresay it is very natural for a man to wish to have land of his own,’ she said, with the indulgent sympathy which was one of her chief charms. ‘Most natural for a man like you who would know and love every inch of his land, and spend his life in causing it to wave with corn. But if you please, I have my pride too, and I think I would rather stoop a little in outward show, if the world likes to call it stooping, than that you should be in a hurry to rax up (stretch violently) an idle fancy, to me. I would like fine to try what it is to be the gudewife of Balcairnie. I’ve a notion it would be a pleasant place to fill, to stand in your mither’s shoes, and be to you what she was to her gude man.’

In after years, when Primrose had long been the much-loved, much-honoured wife of Jock Home, and their love had room and to spare for merry jesting, he was wont to assure their daughters that he would never have presumed to approach their mother as a suitor if she had not given him the first word of encouragement.

On the whole, Balcairnie and Primrose’s _mésalliance_--small by comparison, though, to be sure, it was a direct result of the first flagrant transgression of social laws, met with large tolerance. There were even persons, only slightly acquainted with the future bride, certainly, who maintained she had done very well for herself--‘a penniless lass with a long pedigree,’ white-faced, and small to boot, who had won so braw a bridegroom and so comfortable a down-sitting as Balcairnie. She had cut her own cloth when she was pretending to be looking after the interests of others. Even the old Lady of Drumsheugh grieved over the marriage principally because she was conscious that here too she had been to blame for the misadventure. And Primrose was so fine and generous a creature she deserved the very best match in the country, which, when it came to that, Primrose argued with spirit she had got.

As for Primrose’s proper guardian, she would not have thought the Prince of Wales or the Duke of York good enough for her darling, so that it did not matter so much that Mrs. Purvis should resent the child’s infatuation, and experience a large amount of chagrin, which had to be tenderly borne with and persuaded away before the wedding could take place.

Mrs. Forsyth, though she had set the example, did not clearly perceive the parallel, and was by no means without several strong private objections. Balcairnie might have plenty of money and old wheat stacks, but he was not in a learned profession like Dr. Forsyth, and it would be a terrible upheaval of the very foundations of gentility if unequal marriages were to become common, the rule instead of the exception.

But there was great and unmixed joy in the hearts of Drumsheugh and Peggy over the delightful fortuitousness of the attachment. Drumsheugh almost shook the bridegroom elect’s hand off, and loudly claimed the right to be ‘blackfoot’ in turn to his friend. Peggy hugged Primrose as if they had been very sisters, and cried that now she was not to lose her, she, Peggy, had little more to desire; she was near the summit of human bliss. In the end even the few hostile voices were silenced, for Balcairnie, in the course of a year or two, fulfilled his purpose of buying a fair estate, was welcomed among the lairds, and held up his head modestly among them. Then the old Lady of Drumsheugh and Mrs. Forsyth took him fully to their hearts.

JEAN KINLOCH.