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But 't will not need the altering of a hair for you, Mary, and you shall take it." "I think I see myself," said Mary Strathsay, "wearing the dress Margray married Graeme in!" For Margray had gone out to my mother in her turn. "Then it's yours, Effie. I'll none of it!"
The lad! "Hush, Margray!" I heard Mary say, for I had risen and stolen forth. "Thou'lt make the child hate us all. Were we savages, we had said less. You know, girl, that our mother loved our father's face in her, and counted the days ere seeing it once more; and having lost it, she is like one bewildered. 'T will all come right. Let the poor body alone, and do not hurt the child's heart so.
"Oh, belike it was the same!" she cried, so loud that I had half to drown it in the pedal. "He's taken to following the sea, they say." "What had Helmar to do with our Mary, Margray?" "What had he to do with her?" answered Margray in under-voice. "He fell in love with her!" "That's not so strange." "Then I'll tell you what's stranger, and open your eyes a wee. She fell in love with him."
And there all the blood flew into my cheeks, and they burned like two fires, and I was fain to clap my palms upon them. "No," said Angus. "I'm not your brother, Ailie darling, and never wish to be, but" "And Margray?" I questioned, quickly, the good Lord alone knew why. "Poor Margray! tell me of her. Perhaps she misses him; he was not, after all, so curst as Willy Scott.
"And who is it would take such a fright?" "My mother's fair daft," said Margray, looking after her with a perplexed gaze, and dropping her scissors. "Surely, Mary, you shouldn't tease her as you do. She's worn more in these four weeks than in as many years. You're a fickle changeling!"
"What is it you mean, Margray dear?" "Sure you've heard of Helmar, child?" Yes, indeed, had I. The descendant of a bold Spanish buccaneer who came northwardly with his godless spoil, when all his raids upon West-Indian seas were done, and whose name had perhaps suffered a corruption at our Provincial lips.
But Margray has a son, and she's named it for you, and her husband let her?" "'Deed, he wasn't asked." "Why not?" "Come, child, read your letters." "Nay, I've but a half-hour more with you; that was the second quarter struck; I'll read them when you're gone. Why not?" "Johnny Graeme is dead." That sobered me a thought. "And Margray?" I asked. "Poor Margray, she feels very badly."
"Oh, Margray, I suppose, what did he think?" "Think? He didn't stop to think; he was mighty glad to meet somebody to speak to. You may just thank your stars that you have such a lover, child!" "I've got no lover!" I wailed, breaking out in crying above the babe. "Oh, why was I born? I'm like to die! I wish I were under the sods this day!" "Oh, goodness me!" exclaimed Margray, in a terror.
"Is that lightly?" she said, smoothing my hair with her pretty pink palms till it caught in the ring she wore. "Never mind what I say, girlie; it's as like to be one word as the other. But I grieved for him. He's deep and quiet; a sorrow sinks and underlies all that's over, in the lad." "Hear her!" said Margray; "one would fancy the six feet of the Ingestre stature were but a pocket-piece!
"I'm finely fitted out, then, with the robe here and the veil there! bridal or burial, toss up a copper and which shall it be?" said Effie, looking upward, and playing with her spools like a juggler's oranges. And here Margray came back. She sat in silence a minute or two, turning her work this way and that, and then burst forth,
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