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Updated: May 12, 2025
"Tak tent, Nelly," whispered a sedate companion, sensible, cautious, and canny, whose flaxen hair over its roll had the dead greyness of age, though the face below was round and dimpled; "young Staneholme drew his sword last night on the President's son because he speered if he had skill to tame a goshawk."
As Staneholme drove out his ailing wife, or constructed a seat for her on the fresh moor, or looked at her stitching his frilled shirts as intently as the child's falling collars, and talked to her of his duties and his sports, his wildness was controlled and dignified.
"There will be no great gathering to-night, Staneholme; no shots or cheers; no lunt in the blue sky; only doubt and amaze about an old man and wife: but there will be two happy hearts that were heavy as stane before. Well-a-day! to think I should be fain to return this way!"
And Nanny Swinton wore her new gown and cockernonie, and blessed her bairn and her bairn's bairn, through tears that were now no more than a sunny shower, the silver mist of the past storm. There was brooding heat on the moors and a glory on the sea when Staneholme rode by his lady's coach, within sight of home.
He lifted down an unresisting burden, took in his a damp, passive hand, and throwing over his shoulder brief, broken thanks, hurried up the flight of stairs, through the rambling, crooked passages into the hall. Staneholme was always a man of few words. He was taken up, as was right, with the little lady, whose habit trailed behind her, and who never raised her modest eyes.
Influenced by an instinctive, inexplicable attraction, Nelly's uncertain footsteps followed Lady Staneholme, and kept pace with her soft tread, when she overlooked her spinners and knitters, gave out her linen and spices, turned over her herbs, and visited her sick and aged.
Nelly heard not, did not care to recognise that the Lady of Staneholme, in her looks, words, and actions, was beautiful with the rare beauty of a meek, quiet, loving spirit which in those troublous days had budded and bloomed and been mellowed by time and trial.
In her green quilted petticoat and spencer she might have been one of the "good people's changelings," only the hue of her cheek was more like that of a brownie of the wold; and, truly, to her remote world there was an impenetrable mystery about the young mistress of Staneholme, in her estrangement and mournfulness.
And on the way she explained first with noble humility that she did not wait for a rejoinder, because she had been deaf ever since Staneholme rode post haste from Edinburgh from the last sitting of the Parliament; and that since she was growing old, although it was pleasant to her to serve the bairns, yet she would be glad to relinquish her cares, and retire to the chimney-corner to her wheel and her book; and she blessed the Lord that she had lived to see the young mistress of Staneholme who would guide the household when she was at her rest.
She had heard Staneholme hound on a refractory tyke till he shouted himself hoarse, and yet turn aside before the badger was unearthed; she had seen him climb the scaurs, and hang dizzily in mid-air over the black water, to secure the wildfowl he had shot, and it was but carrion; and once, Joan and Madge, to whom he was wont to be indulgent in a condescending, superior way, trembled before the stamp of his foot and the kindling flash of his eye.
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