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"See Sir Angus now," said Margray, bending forward at the pictures shifting through the door-way. "He'd do for the Colossus at what-you-may-call-it; and there's our Effie, she minds me of a yellow-bird, hanging on his arm and talking: I wonder if that's what my mother means, I wonder will my mother compass it. See Mary Strathsay there!
Strathsay had cautiously planted and nursed the seed, a winning boy, a noble lad, a lordly man. If Margray had not married old Johnny Graeme, it would have broken Mrs. Strathsay's will; the will was strong; she did, she married him. If Mary, with her white moonsheen of beauty, did not bewitch the senses of Captain Seavern, it would break Mrs.
"What, indeed? And you'll not be home a day and night before you'll be tossing and hushing him, and the moon'll not be too good for him to have, should he cry for it!" "Johnny Graeme?" "No. Angus Graeme!" "Oh! Margray has a son? Why didn't you tell me before?" "When you were so eager to know!" "It's all in my letters, I suppose.
And so she kept on, diverting me, for Margray had some vague idea that my crying would bring my mother; and she'd not have her know of her talk with Angus, for the world; marriage after marriage would not lighten the rod of iron that Mrs. Strathsay held over her girls' lives, I ween.
Margray came running through the garden that afternoon, and up where we sat, and over her arm was fluttering no end of gay skirts and ribbons. "I saved this pink muslin it's real Indian, lascar lawn, fine as cobweb for you, Alice," she said. "It's not right to leave it to the moths, but you'll never need it now.
He's gone where there's no gold to make, unless they smelt it there; and I'm not sure but they do, sinsyne one can see all the evil it's the root of, and all the woe it works, and he bought Margray, you know he did, Angus!" "It's little Alice talking so of her dead brother!" "He's no brother of mine; I never took him, if Margray did. Brother indeed! there's none such, unless it's you, Angus!"
I ran over to Margray's, and finding the boy awake, I dismissed his nurses the place, and stayed and played with him and took the charge till long past the dinner-hour, and Margray came home at length, and then, when I had sung the child asleep again, for the night, and Margray had shown me all the contents of her presses, the bells were ringing nine from across the river, and I ran back as I came, and up and into my little bed, and my heart was fit to break, and I cried till the sound of the sobs checked me into silence.
"Yes," said Mary, "it was when Angus arrived in London from Edinboro', the day before joining his ship." "And why didn't we ever hear of it?" "I don't just remember, Effie dear," replied Margray, meditatively, "unless 't were it must have been that those were the letters lost when the Atlantis went down." "Poor gentleman!" said Mary.
"Poor thing!" said Margray, when she'd taken off my bonnet and looked at the fashion of my frock, "but you're sorely altered. Never fret, it's worth no tear; she counted much on your likely looks, though, you never told us the accident took them." "I thought you'd know, Margray." "Oh, for sure, there's many escapes. And this is grenadine? I'd rather have the old mohair.
Belike he spoke her kindly." "Always," said Angus, gnawing in his lip a moment ere the word. "And the child changed him, Mary Strathsay says. But perhaps you're right; Margray makes little moan." "She was aye a quiet lass. Poor Johnny! I'm getting curst myself. Well, it's all in my letters. But you, Angus dear, how came you here?"
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