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Updated: June 4, 2025
Plainly nothing was to be found out from him about Kilmeny and her grim guardians. One evening in late June Mrs. Williamson was sitting by her kitchen window. Her knitting lay unheeded in her lap, and Timothy, though he nestled ingratiatingly against her foot as he lay on the rug and purred his loudest, was unregarded.
He held out the book to her, but, to his surprise, she shook her head, with a deeper flush on her face. "Won't you take the book, Kilmeny? Why not?" She took her pencil and wrote slowly, unlike her usual quick movement. "Do not be offended with me. I shall not need anything to make me remember you because I can never forget you. But I would rather not take the book. I do not want to read it again.
He did not hear stealthy footsteps behind him in the dim spruce wood. He did not even see Kilmeny as she came slowly around the curve of the wild cherry lane. Kilmeny had sought the old orchard for the healing of her heartbreak, if healing were possible for her.
"Kilmeny's mouth is like a love-song made incarnate in sweet flesh," said Eric enthusiastically. "Humph!" said Mr. Marshall. "Well," he added more tolerantly, a moment later, "I was a poet, too, for six months in my life when I was courting your mother." Kilmeny was reading on the bench under the lilac trees when they reached the orchard.
As they approached the old orchard a strain of music came floating through the resinous morning arcades of the spruce wood a wild, sorrowful, appealing cry, full of indescribable pathos, yet marvelously sweet. "What is that?" exclaimed David, starting. "That is Kilmeny playing on her violin," answered Eric. "She has great talent in that respect and improvises wonderful melodies."
This want was, however, in some degree supplied, by a most characteristic speech from Hogg himself, in which he related how the inspiration of the muse came upon him, in consequence of his being born, like Burns, on the 25th of January; how, on the evening of his birth, a man and horse were dispatched for the midwife, but the night being wild, and Ettrick deep in flood, the rider was lost; nevertheless, the familiar spirit called Brownie the Lubber-Fiend of Milton supplied his place, and brought the marvelling midwife in time to achieve the adventure of the future poet of Kilmeny.
And all HE said was, 'Wait until you see Kilmeny Gordon, sir. Well, I WILL wait till I see her, but I shall look at her with the eyes of sixty-five, mind you, not the eyes of twenty-four. And if she isn't what your wife ought to be, sir, you give her up or paddle your own canoe. I shall not aid or abet you in making a fool of yourself and spoiling your life."
She laid down her knitting and gazed out of the window as if pondering seriously some question in her own mind. Finally she said, with an intonation of keen interest in her voice, "I suppose it must have been Kilmeny Gordon, Master." "Kilmeny Gordon? Do you mean the niece of Thomas Gordon of whom your husband spoke?" "Yes."
She wore a trailing, clinging dress of some creamy tinted fabric that had been her mother's. It had not been altered in any respect, for fashion held no sway at the Gordon homestead, and Kilmeny thought that the dress left nothing to be desired.
You did not come last night and I was so sorry. Nothing in the orchard seemed nice any longer. I couldn't even play. I tried to, and my violin only cried. I waited until it was dark and then I went home." "I am sorry you were disappointed, Kilmeny. I couldn't come last night. Some day I shall tell you why. I stayed home to learn a new lesson. I am sorry you missed me no, I am glad.
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