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Sally's confidence in her mistress was equaled or perhaps even excelled by her mistress's confidence in herself. Leaning upon her cane and attended by the faithful though terrified servitor, Madame Tallafferr rustled forward. She took her stand upon the brink of the fountain in almost the exact spot where she had disarmed MacLachan, the tailor, drunk, songful, and suicidal, two years before.
What better would you ask?" "A bit of prudence," said MacLachan. "Prudence!" I retorted scornfully. "The miser of the virtues. It may pay its own way through the world. But when did it ever take Happiness along for a jaunt?" I was quite pleased with my little epigram until the Scot countered upon me with his observation about two young fools and an old one. Oh, well! Likely enough.
"'Twill encourage the pair, when a man of yer age and influence in Our Square should be dissuadin' them." "Perhaps they need a friendly word." MacLachan frowned. "Ye're determined?" "Oh, quite!" "Then I'll give ye a title for yer romance." "That's very kind of you. Give it." "The Story of Two Young Fools. By an Old One," said MacLachan witheringly, and turned to depart. "Mac!" "What?"
"A man of your age and influence in Our Square," I interrupted sternly, "should have been dissuading them." "Arr ye designin' to put all that in yer sil in yer interestin' account?" "Every detail." MacLachan dislodged my crook from his leg, gave me such a look as mid-Victorian painters strove for in pictures of the Dying Stag, and retired to his Home of Fashion. The explanation is Barbran.
She organized an evening sewing-circle for women whose eyelids would not stay open after their long day's work. She formed cultural improvement classes for such as Leon Coventry, the printer, who knows half the literatures of the world, and MacLachan, the tailor, to whom Carlyle is by way of being light reading. And so forth and so on.
Young Stacey raged against a stupid and corrupt press. MacLachan expressed the acidulous hope that thereafter Cyrus the Gaunt would be content with making a fool of himself without implicating innocent and confiding friends. The party then sent out for turpentine and broke up to reassemble no more. Only Phil Stacey, inventor of the great idea, was still faithful to and hopeful of it.
Babies, probably, and new needs and pressing anxieties, and Love will perhaps flutter at the window when Want shows his grim face at the door; and Wisdom will be justified of his forebodings, and yet and yet who am I, old and lonely and uncompanioned, yet once touched with the spheral music and the sacred fire, that I should subscribe to the dour orthodoxies of MacLachan and that ilk?
"It's a cult," said Cyrus. "The credit of the notion belongs not to me, but to my esteemed better half. A few chosen souls " "Here comes another of them," I conjectured, as a bowed form approached. "Who is it? MacLachan!" The old Scot appeared to be suffering from a severe cold. His handkerchief was pressed to his face. "Take it down, Mac," I ordered. "It's useless."
It was actually for this, as holding out encouragement to their reckless, feckless plans, that Wisdom, in the person of MacLachan, the tailor, reprehended me, rather than for my historical intentions regarding the pair. "What'll they be marryin' on?" demanded Mac Wisdom that is to say, MacLachan. "Spring and youth," I said. "The fragrance of lilac in the air, the glow of romance in their hearts.
What does he know about Us!" Immediately upon hearing of my fell design MacLachan, the tailor, paid a visit of protest to my bench. "Is it true fact that I hear, Dominie?" "What do you hear, MacLachan?" "That ye're to make one of yer silly histories about Barbran?" "Perfectly true," said I, passing over the uncomplimentary adjective. "'Tis a feckless waste of time." "Very likely."
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