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Updated: May 16, 2025
"Surely nothing will happen this time," said the sympathetic Elise. "Everything begins to prosper now. The crops are beautiful; the weather is splendid; the house is ready to begin to all the logs are cut and squared. Your father is quite willing, and Dan wishing for the day what more could you desire, Elspie?" "Nothing; all seems well, but " She finished the sentence with another sigh.
Matters remained in abeyance while the illness continued; Jean had a night of fever, and when that passed, under the experienced management of Dame Elspie, as the sisters called her more and more, she was very weak and sadly depressed.
But Gavin made a hurried excuse about seeing to the cattle, and hastily putting down his violin went out quickly. Auntie Elspie saw his face as he passed and all her doubts and with them her hopes vanished. She had suspected before; now she knew! "I thought Gavie did all the chores," said Auntie Flora, looking up as she finished only the first stanza of the song. Auntie Elspie said nothing.
"Handsome!" cried Elspie; "is it handsome, the face all a spatter with the color of the hair? He's nice eyes of his own, but his skin's deesgustin'." Which speech, if Donald had overheard it, would have caused that there should never have been this story to tell. But luckily Donald did not.
And all the while Auntie Elspie watched him closely, her heart sinking. When supper was over and they sat around the sitting room stove, Auntie Flora seated herself at the organ, thinking to cheer him. "Come away, Gavie dear," she cried. "It's a long time since we had some music and I'm afraid you'll be forgettin' the fiddle altogether. Come away and we'll have a good old sing."
What more natural than that these two, on hearing the order given about blankets and table-cloths, etcetera, should quit the fires and follow Elspie and Elise into the house! In the first bedroom into which they entered they found Archie and Billie Sinclair, the latter seated comfortably in an arm-chair close to a window, the former wild with delight at the sudden demand on all his energies.
"But inside I ached like the toothache for the poor thing for Elspie. An' I says to her, when she come home: "'Elspie, I says, 'why don't you go out 'round some an' see folks here in the village? The minister's wife'd be rill glad to hev you come, I says. "'Oh, I hate to hev 'em sit thinkin' about me in behind their eyes, s'she, ready. "'What? says I, blank.
"Oh! fery goot!" retorted the old man with a touch of sarcasm; "you know fery well what Elspie will be sayin' to that, or you would not be so ready to let it rest with her. Yes, yes, she is safe to see her way to go the way that you want her to go."
"I wass thinkin', Tan," remarked the old man one morning, while walking in the verandah with his after-breakfast pipe, "that I will be getting in the crops pretty soon this year, an' they're heavy crops too, so that we may look forward to a comfortable winter whatever." "True, and as our crops are also very good, thank God, I begin now to hope that Elspie may see her way to "
The unsettled state of the colony, and the frequent failure of the crops had, as we have seen, exerted an evil influence for a long time on poor Dan's matrimonial prospects, and at last, feeling that more settled times might yet be in the remote future, and that, as regarded defence and maintenance, it would be on the whole better both for Elspie and himself that they should get married without delay, he resolved to take the important step, and, as old McKay remarked, have it over.
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