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MacAlpine declared, if "she hadna trusted to his honour's name being used in their company, she wad never hae drawn them a stoup o' liquor; for Mr. Galbraith, she might see him again, or she might no, but weel did she wot she had sma' chance of seeing her siller and she was a puir widow, had naething but her custom to rely on."
"In the reign of Malcolm the Second, the districts now called Aberdeen and Forfar were possessed, and had been so, so tradition saith, since Kenneth MacAlpine, by the Lords of Brus or Bris, a family originally from the North. They were largely and nobly connected, particularly with Norway and Gaul.
As for me, I had had enough of girls for one day, and I was wondering how best to cut across the fields, take a turn about the town, and so get home to my father's by the wood of pines behind the school, when suddenly a voice dropped upon me that fairly stunned me, so unexpected it was. "Mr. Duncan MacAlpine," it said, "I congratulate you on your choice of a father-in-law.
I stopped in the entrance of the stable, if indeed a place be entitled to that name where horses were stowed away along with goats, poultry, pigs, and cows, under the same roof with the mansion-house; although, by a degree of refinement unknown to the rest of the hamlet, and which I afterwards heard was imputed to an overpride on the part of Jeanie MacAlpine, our landlady, the apartment was accommodated with an entrance different from that used by her biped customers.
So when she came up to London, three days before the end of October, she called upon the publisher with whom she had made her agreement, and confessed her inability to keep her word. Mr. MacAlpine was polite, but at the same time evidently vexed. If Miss Campion had been ill he was very sorry to hear it, but he liked to be able to rely on the engagements which he made.
There she stood, her eyes shooting witcheries, poised for flight like a butterfly, the dimples playing hide-and-seek on her face, and her whole soul and body saying to the sons of men, 'Come, seek me on your knees you know you can't help loving me! It is very good for you to worship me!" "And you are not ashamed, Duncan MacAlpine, to speak such words?" "Oh, ye Lallan Scot!"
It fell out, therefore, that when she came a little shamefacedly to consult my father, as she sometimes did in days of difficulty for under a show of contempt she often really submitted to his judgment it was given to Agnes Anne to say suddenly, "Let me go to Marnhoul, grandmother!" More so still when John MacAlpine nodded approval. "Yes, let the lassie go let her put her hand to the work.
She shall come home to my mother's with me, even if Duncan MacAlpine there has not enough sense to bid her." It was perhaps natural that, till arrangements were completed, so young a bride should remain with her family. But, on the other hand, young people could not begin too soon to face the inevitable trials of life.
I did not know what she felt then, nor, perhaps, do I quite know yet; but she caught a tangle of wild cut-leafed ivy from a tree on which I had long watched it grow, and with a spray of small green leaves she crowned herself, and so departed as she had come, singing as if she had not a care in the world, or as if I, Duncan MacAlpine, were the last and least of all.
I assured her that we had neither peat nor woodcutting privileges on the Meadows, and to change the subject asked her if she would not go up and see Irma. "A' in guid time," she said. "I hae a word or two to ask ye first, laddie. No that muckle is to be expected o' a man that wad write to puir Janet Lyon instead o' to me, Duncan MacAlpine!"
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