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There's one speck in the fruit, however, as far as I can see-Miss Louie! From the first moment of his introduction to her, Ancrum had taken particular notice of David's handsome sister, who, on her side, had treated her old minister and teacher with a most thoroughgoing indifference.
He walked home in a state of exaltation like a man still environed with the emotion of great poetry or great music. He said very little about Regnault in the days that followed to Ancrum or Barbier, even to Dora, with whom every week his friendship was deepening.
'Well, good luck to you! said the minister, altering his position so as to look at his visitor full, and doing it with a slowness which showed that all movement was an effort. Look after your sister, Davy. David had sat down at Ancrum's invitation. He said nothing in answer to this last remark, and Ancrum could not decipher him in the darkness visible of the ill-trimmed lamp.
'John will want to know about Louie. She is married, as I told you, to a French sculptor. I have handed over to her all my father's money that is why I drew it out. Mr. Ancrum edged up closer to him all ears waiting for more. But there was nothing more. 'And you are satisfied? he said at last. David nodded and looked out of window intently. 'What is the man's name?
It is an old land, of war, of Otterburn, and Ancrum, and the Raid of the Fair Dodhead; but the plough has passed over all but the upper pastoral solitudes. Turning again to the downward slope you see the loch of Alemoor, small and sullen, with Alewater feeding it. Nobody knows much about the trout in it. "It is reckoned the residence of the water-cow," a monster like the Australian bunyip.
Ancrum had set him thinking, and so stirred his conscience in various indirect and unforeseen ways, Sandy had been a terror to him; the dead man had gained a mysterious hold on the living. 'Roon away! repeated Hannah scornfully; 'whar ud they roon to? They're just at soom o' their divilments, 'at's what they are.
The room was the same little lodging-house sitting-room in Mortimer Road, where David years before had poured out his boyish account of himself. Neither chiffonnier, nor pictures, nor antimacassars had changed at all; the bustling landlady was still loud and vigorous. But Ancrum was a shadow. 'You are better? David said, holding his hand in both his. 'Oh yes, better for a time.
The brother and sister left Manchester about midday, and spent the night in London at a little City hotel much frequented by Nonconformist ministers, which Ancrum had recommended. Then next day! How little those to whom all the widest opportunities of life come for the asking, can imagine such a zest, such a freshness of pleasure!
Towards midnight, when all was still, he opened the locked drawer which held for him the few things which symbolised and summed up his past a portrait of Lucy, by the river under the trees, taken by a travelling photographer, not more than six weeks before her death a little collection of pictures of Sandy from babyhood onwards Louie's breviary his father's dying letter a book which had belonged to Ancrum, his vanished friend.
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