interesting fact, though we scarcely thought the information worth
the
additional pennies we paid for it in the
telegram; however, Mrs.
M'Collop's comfortable
assurance, together with the quality of the
rhubarb tart and mutton-chops, brought us to a decision. Before
going to sleep we rented the draper's house, named it Bide-a-Wee
Cottage, engaged daily luncheons and dinners for three persons at
the Pettybaw Inn and Posting Establishment, telegraphed to Edinburgh
for Jane Grieve, to Callander for Francesca, and despatched a letter
to Paris for Mr. Beresford, telling him we had taken a `wee theekit
hoosie,' and that the `yett was ajee'
whenever he chose to come.
"Possibly it would have been wiser not send for them until we were
settled," I said reflectively. "Jane Grieve may not prove a
suitable person."
"The name somehow sounds too young and inexperienced," observed
Salemina, "and what association have I with the
phrase `sister's
husband's niece'?"
"You have heard me quote Lewis Carroll's verse, perhaps:-
`He thought he saw a buffalo
Upon the chimney-piece;
He looked again and found it was
His sister's husband's niece:
"Unless you leave the house," he said,
"I'll send for the police!"'
The only thing that troubles me," I went on, "is the question of
Willie Beresford's place of
residence. He expects to be somewhere
within easy walking or cycling distance,--four or five miles at
most."
"He won't be
desolate even if he doesn't have a thatched roof, a
pansy garden, and a blossoming shrub," said Salemina
sleepily, for
our business arrangements and discussions had lasted well into the
evening. "What he will want is a
lodging where he can have frequent
sight and speech of you. How I dread him! How I
resent his sharing
of you with us! I don't know why I use the word `sharing,'
forsooth! There is nothing half so fair and just in his majesty's
greedy mind. Well, it's the way of the world; only it is odd, with
the
universe of women to choose from, that he must needs take you.
Strathdee seems the most
desirable place for him, if he has a
macintosh and
rubber boots. Inchcaldy is another town near here
that we didn't see at all--that might do; the draper's wife says
that we can send fine linen to the
laundry there."
"Inchcaldy? Oh yes, I think we heard of it in Edinburgh--at least I
have some association with the name: it has a fine golf-course, I
believe, and very likely we ought to have looked at it, although for
my part I have no regrets. Nothing can equal Pettybaw; and I am so
pleased to be a Scottish householder! Aren't we just like Bessie
Bell and Mary Gray?
`They were twa bonnie lassies;
They biggit a bower on yon burnbrae,
An' theekit it ower wi' rashes.'
Think of our stone-floored kitchen, Salemina! Think of the real
box-bed in the wall for little Jane Grieve! She will have red-gold
hair, blue eyes, and a pink cotton gown. Think of our own cat!
Think how Francesca will admire the 1602 lintel! Think of our back
garden, with our own `neeps' and
vegetable marrows growing in it!
Think how they will envy us at home when they learn that we have
settled down into Scottish yeowomen!
`It's oh, for a patch of land!
It's oh, for a patch of land!
Of all the blessings tongue can name,
There's nane like a patch of land!'
Think of Willie coming to step on the floor and look at the bed and
stroke the cat and covet the lintel and walk in the garden and weed
the turnips and pluck the marrows that grow by our ain wee theekit
hoosie!"
"Penelope, you appear
slightly intoxicated! Do close the window and
come to bed."
"I am intoxicated with the
caller air of Pettybaw," I rejoined,
leaning on the window-sill and looking at the stars, while I
thought: "Edinburgh was beautiful; it is the most beautiful grey
city in the world; it lacked one thing only to make it perfect, and
Pettybaw will have that before many moons:-
`Oh, Willie's rare an' Willie's fair
An' Willie's
wondrous bonny;
An' Willie's hecht to marry me
Gin e'er he marries ony.
`O gentle wind that bloweth south,
From where my love repaireth,
Convey a word from his dear mouth,
An' tell me how he fareth.'"
Chapter XV. Jane Grieve and her grievances.
`Gae tak' awa' the china plates,
Gae tak' them far frae me;
And bring to me a
wooden dish,
It's that I'm best used wi'.
And tak' awa' thae siller spoons,
The like I ne'er did see,
And bring to me the horn cutties,
They're good eneugh for me.'
Earl Richard's Wedding.
The next day was one of the most
cheerful and one of the most
fatiguing that I ever spent. Salemina and I moved every article of
furniture in our wee theekit hoosie from the place where it
originally stood to another and a better place: arguing, of course,
over the
precise spot it should occupy, which was generally upstairs
if the thing were already down, or
downstairs if it were already up.
We hid all the more
hideous ornaments of the draper's wife, and
folded away her most objectionable tidies and table-covers,
replacing them with our own pretty draperies. There were only two
pictures in the sitting-room, and as an artist I would not have
parted with them for worlds. The first was The Life of a Fireman,
which could only
remind one of the
explosion of a
mammoth tomato,
and the other was The Spirit of Poetry
calling Burns from the
Plough. Burns wore white knee-breeches, military boots, a splendid
waistcoat with lace ruffles, and carried a cocked hat. To have been
so dressed he must have known the Spirit was intending to come. The
plough-horse was a
magnificent Arabian, whose tail swept the freshly
furrowed earth, while the Spirit of Poetry was issuing from a
practicable
wigwam on the left, and was a lady of such ample
dimensions that no poet would have dared say `no' when she called
him.
The dining-room was blighted by framed photographs of the draper's
relations and the draper's wife's relations; all
uniformly ugly. It
seems strange that married couples having the least beauty to
bequeath to their offspring should
persist in having the largest
families. These ladies and gentlemen were too numerous to remove,
so we obscured them with trailing branches; reflecting that we only
breakfasted in the room, and the morning meal is easily digested
when one lives in the open air. We arranged flowers everywhere, and
bought potted plants at a little
nursery hard by. We apportioned
the bedrooms, giving Francesca the hardest bed,--as she is the
youngest, and wasn't here to choose,--me the next hardest, and
Salemina the best; Francesca the largest looking-glass and wardrobe,
me the best view, and Salemina the largest bath. We bought
housekeeping stores, distributing our
patronageequally between the
two grocers; we purchased aprons and dust-cloths from the rival
drapers, engaged bread and rolls from the baker, milk and cream from
the plumber (who keeps three cows), interviewed the flesher about
chops; in fact, no young couple facing love in a
cottage ever had a
busier or happier time than we; and at
sundown, when Francesca
arrived, we were in the pink of order,
standing under our own
lintel, ready to
welcome her to Pettybaw. As to being strangers in
a strange land, we had a bowing
acquaintance with everybody on the
main street of the tiny village, and were on terms of considerable
intimacy with half a dozen families, including dogs and babies.
Francesca was
delighted with everything, from the station (Pettybaw
Sands, two miles away) to Jane Grieve's name, which she thought as
perfect, in its way, as Susanna Crum's. She had purchased a
`tirling-pin,' that
old-time precursor of knockers and bells, at an
antique shop in Oban, and we fastened it on the front door at once,
taking turns at risping it until our own nerves were shattered, and
the draper's wife ran down the loaning to see if we were in need of
anything. The twisted bar of iron stands out from the door and the
ring is drawn up and down over a
series of nicks, making a rasping
noise. The lovers and ghaists in the old ballads always `tirled at
the pin,' you remember; that is, touched it gently.
Francesca brought us letters from Edinburgh, and what was my joy, in
opening Willie's, to learn that he begged us to find a place in
Fifeshire, and as near St. Rules or Strathdee as
convenient; for in
that case he could accept an
invitation he had just received to
visit his friend Robin Anstruther, at Rowardennan Castle.
"It is not the visit at the castle I wish so much, you may be sure,"
he wrote, "as the fact that Lady Ardmore will make everything
pleasant for you. You will like my friend Robin Anstruther, who is
Lady Ardmore's youngest brother, and who is going to her to be
nursed and coddled after a baddish accident in the hunting-field.
He is very sweet-tempered, and will get on well with Francesca--"
"I don't see the
connection,"
rudely interrupted that spirited young
person.
"I suppose she has more room on her list in the country than she had
in Edinburgh; but if my
remembrance serves me, she always enrolls a
goodly number of victims, whether she has any immediate use for them
or not."
"Mr. Beresford's manners have not been improved by his
residence in
Paris," observed Francesca, with
resentment in her tone and delight
in her eye.
"Mr. Beresford's manners are always perfect," said Salemina loyally,
"and I have no doubt that this visit to Lady Ardmore will be
extremely pleasant for him, though very embarrassing to us. If we
are thrown into forced
intimacy with a castle" (Salemina spoke of it
as if it had fangs and a lashing tail), "what shall we do in this
draper's hut?"
"Salemina!" I expostulated, "bears will
devour you as they did the
ungrateful child in the fairy-tale. I wonder at your
daring to use
the word `hut' in
connection with our wee theekit hoosie!"
"They will never understand that we are doing all this for the
novelty of it," she objected. "The Scottish
nobility and gentry
probably never think of renting a house for a joke. Imagine Lord
and Lady Ardmore, the young Ardmores, Robin Anstruther, and Willie
Beresford
calling upon us in this sitting-room! We ourselves would
have to sit in the hall and talk in through the doorway."
"All will be well," Francesca
assured her soothingly. "We shall be
pardoned much because we are Americans, and will not be expected to
know any better. Besides, the
gifted Miss Hamilton is an artist,
and that covers a
multitude of sins against conventionality. When
the castle people `tirl at the pin,' I will appear as the maid, if
you like, following your example at Mrs Bobby's
cottage in Belvern,
Pen."
"And it isn't as if there were many houses to choose from, Salemina,
nor as if Bide-a-Wee
cottage were cheap," I continued. "Think of
the rent we pay and keep your head high. Remember that the draper's
wife says there is nothing half so comfortable in Inchcaldy,
although that is twice as large a town."
"INCHCALDY!" ejaculated Francesca, sitting down heavily upon the
sofa and staring at me.
"Inchcaldy, my dear,--spelled CALDY, but
pronounced CAWDY; the town
where you are to take your nonsensical little fripperies to be
laundered."
"Where is Inchcaldy? How far away?"
"About five miles, I believe, but a lovely road."
"Well," she exclaimed
bitterly, "of course Scotland is a small,
insignificant country; but, tiny as it is, it p
resents some liberty