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Updated: May 15, 2025
Also there was about Miss Balquidder a certain dry humor essentially Scotch neither Irish "wit" nor English "fun," but Scotch humor; a little ponderous perhaps, yet sparkling: like the sparkles from a large lump of coal, red-warm at the heart, and capable of warming a whole household. As many a time it had warmed the little household at Stowbury for Robert Lyon had it in perfection.
But all this experience though happily it could never be put into a book had given to the woman herself a view of human nature at once so large, lenient, and just, that she was the best person possible to hear the strange and pitiful story of young Ascott Leaf. How it came out Hilary hardly knew; she seemed to have told very little, and yet Miss Balquidder guessed it all.
In a tone that somehow touched every fibre of Hilary's heart, Miss Balquidder said, placing her on a low chair beside her own. "My dear, you are in trouble. I saw it a week or two ago, but did not like to speak. Couldn't you say it out, and let me help you? You need not be afraid. I never tell any thing, and every body tells every thing to me." That was true.
There, poor girl, her heart sank, especially when Miss Balquidder, in an anomalous costume and a severe voice, opened the door herself, and asked who was there, disturbing a respectable family at this late hour? Elizabeth answered, what she had before determined to say, as sufficiently explaining her errand, and yet betraying nothing that her mistress might wish concealed.
But in her own house, or it might be from the sudden apparition of that young face at her lonely fireside, Miss Balquidder appeared quite different. A small thing touches a heart that is sore with trouble. When the good woman rose up after patting the little feet, and approving loudly of the woolen stockings she saw that Hilary's whole face was quivering with the effort to keep back her tears.
I meant, as you suggested, to stop out of your salary so much per month, till I had my eighty pounds sate back again." "But suppose you never had it back? I am young and strong; still I might fall ill I might die, and you never be repaid." "Yes, I should," said Miss Balquidder, with a serious smile.
Added to this said mother-liness of hers, Miss Balquidder, possessed that faculty, which some people have in a remarkable degree, and some very good people too are totally deficient in, of attracting confidence.
Miss Balquidder was not a personable woman; she had never been so even in youth; and age had told its tale upon those large, strong features "thoroughly Scotch features," they would have been called by those who think all Scotchwomen are necessarily big, raw-boned, and ugly; and have never seen that wonderfully noble beauty not prettiness, but actual beauty in its highest physical as well as spiritual development which is not seldom found across the Tweed.
She spoke quietly, but Miss Balquidder could see how agitated she was; how she evidently struggled with many feelings that would be best struggled with alone. The good old lady rose. "Take your own time, my dear; I will keep the situation open for you for one week from this date. And now I must send you away, for I have a great deal to do."
Like a waft as from old times, it made Hilary at once feel at home with Miss Balquidder. Equally, Miss Balquidder might have seen something in this girl's patient, heroic, forlorn youth which reminded her of her own. Unreasoning as these sudden attractions appear, there is often a hidden something beneath which in reality makes them both natural and probable, as was the case here.
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