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Updated: June 16, 2025
Auntie Flora had always been Gavin's instructor, and had led him along the way of good books and into a slight knowledge of music, Auntie Janet had been his playmate and confidante, the one with whom he had always shared his secrets and to whom he had confessed his boyish scrapes. But Auntie Elspie had been his mother, and she knew her boy.
Flora's attire was quite a picture, with the ruffled elbow-sleeves and the long, square boddice, over which a close white kerchief hid the once lovely neck and throat of her whom old Elspie had chronicled and truly as "the Flower of Perth." The face, Olive thought, was as she could have imagined Mary Queen of Scots grown old.
He was a distant cousin, and a kindly man and the Aunties were always giving his wife a hand with her work and practically kept his boys in socks and mittens. His oldest boys were almost grown to manhood, and Hughie had often said to Auntie Elspie, "If Gavin ever wants to quit farming, Elspie, I'll take Craig-Ellachie on shares. I need a bit more land for my stock."
As time went on, however, he became interested in the Gospel narratives in spite of himself, and he began to experience some sort of relish for the evening reading chiefly because, as he carefully explained to Elspie, "the droning o' the old wumman's voice" sent him to sleep. Meanwhile the other invalid Duncan senior progressed as slowly as did his son.
"Yes, very glorious, very magnificent!" said Daniel, gazing into the maiden's eyes, and utterly regardless of the berg. "I wonder how such a huge mass ever manages to melt," said Elspie for the human mind, even in pretty girls, is discursive. "I wonder it does not melt at once," said Dan, with pointed emphasis.
"O yes, I know that well enough," said the poor boy with some enthusiasm; "Elspie is always very good to me. You've no notion how nice she is, Dan." "Hm! well, I have got a sort of a half notion, maybe," returned Dan with a peculiar look. "But that's all right, then.
Her papa she now rarely saw, he was so much from home, and the quiet house, wherein she loved to ramble, became a house always full of visitors, her beautiful mamma being the centre of its gaiety. Olive retreated to her nursery and to Elspie, and the rest of her childhood was one long, solitary, pensive dream. In that dream was the clear transcript of all the scenes amidst which it passed.
"'Elspie, s'I, stern, 'ain't you no feelin', s'I, 'for the loss o' the only home you've got to your back? "'Oh, I donno, s'she, an' I could see her smilin' in that bright light, 'oh, I donno. It'll be some place to come to, afterwards. When I go out walkin', s'she, 'I ain't no place to head for. I sort o' circle 'round an' come back.
At times she looked almost with an uneasy awe on the gentle, silent child who rarely played, who wanted no amusing, but would sit for hours watching the sky from the window, or the grass and waving trees in the fields; who never was heard to laugh, but now and then smiled in her own peculiar way a smile almost "uncanny," as Elspie expressed it.
Like Duncan junior, old Duncan was quite willing to hear the Bible read to him now and then, by Jessie Davidson and more especially by Little Bill; but the idea of deriving any real comfort from that book never for a moment entered his head. One day Elspie came to him and said: "Daddy, Dan wants to see you to-day, if you feel well enough." "Surely, my tear.
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