not possess; for Rodie would come in with his pockets all full of clammy and wet things—jelly-fish, which he called by some grand name—and the queer things that wave about long fingers on the edges of the pools, and shrink into themselves when you touch them. This was before the days when sea-anemones became a fashionable pursuit, but children brought up by the sea had, of course, known and wondered at these creatures long before science took them up. But to bring them home was a different matter; filling the school-room with nasty, sticky things, which, out of their native element, decayed and made bad smells, and were the despair of the unfortunate maid who had to keep that room in order, and dared not, except in extremity, throw Rodie’s hoards away. “It is not Rodie’s fault; it is Johnny Wemyss that just tells him nonsense stories,” Elsie said. She would have given her little finger to have gone with him on those rambles, and to have heard all about those strange living things; but already the invisible bonds that confine a woman’s movements had begun to cramp Elsie’s free footsteps, and the presence of Johnny Wemyss made, she was well aware, her own impossible, though it was just Johnny Wemyss’s “nonsense stories” that she desired most to hear.
Rodie condescended to accompany her on her Sunday walk when all St. Rule’s perambulated the links from which they were shut out on week-days; but that became the only occasion on which she could calculate on his company, and not even the new Waverley, which had failed to beguile the minister from his urgent trouble, could seduce Rodie from his many engagements with his fellows to sit with his sister in the turret, with the book between them as of old.
Elsie, it is true, gradually began to make herself amends for this desertion by forming new alliances of her own with girls of her own age, who have always abounded in St. Rule’s; but these did not at all make up to her, as Johnny Wemyss seemed to make up to Rodie, for the separation from her natural companion and fellow. These young ladies were beginning already, as they approached sixteen, to think of balls and triumphs in a way which was different from the romps of old. The world, in the shape of young men older than their boyish companions, and with other intentions, began to open about them. At that time it was nothing very remarkable that girls should marry very early, a circumstance which, of itself, made a great change in their ideas, and separated them more than anything else could have done from their childish contemporaries of the other sex.
Elsie was in that hot stage of indignation and revolt against sweethearts, and all talk on the subject, which is generally a phase in a girl’s development. She was angry at the introduction of this unworthy subject, and almost furious with the girls who chattered and laughed about Bobbie this and Willie that—for in St. Rule’s they all knew each other by their Christian names. She could understand that you should prefer your own brother’s society to that of any girl, and much wondered that Rodie should prefer any boy to herself—which was one great distinction between girls and boys which she discovered with indignation and shame. “I like Rodie better than anybody, but he likes his Johnny Wemyss better than me! Ay!” she cried, the indignation gaining upon her, “and even if Johnny Wemyss were not there, Ralph Beaton or Harry Seaton, or any laddie—whereas I would give up any lassie for him.”
“That is just the way of men,” said Marion, her eldest sister, who, being now on the eve of marriage, naturally knew a great deal more than a girl of sixteen.
“Not with Matthew,” cried Elsie, who, if she had no experience, was not without observation; “he likes you better than all the men in the world.”
“Oh, Matthew!” said Marion, with a blush—“that’s different: but when he’s used to me,” added this discreet young woman—“Matthew, I’ve every reason to believe, will just be like the rest. He will play his gouff, though I may be sitting solitary at home—and he will go out to his dinner and argue among his men, and take his walks with Hugh Playfair, or whoever turns up. He will say, ‘My dear, I want a long stretch that would be too far for you,’ as my father says to my mother. She takes it very well, and is glad he should be enjoying himself, and leaving her at peace to look after her house and her bairns—but perhaps she was not so pleased at first: and perhaps I’ll not be pleased either when it comes to that,” Marion said, reflectively.
Sense was her great characteristic, and she had, in her long engagement, had much time to turn all these things over in her mind.
“I don’t think it will ever come to that—for he cannot let you be for a moment,” said Elsie. “I sometimes wish he were a hundred miles away.”
“Ah,” said Marion, “but you know that will not last; and, indeed, it is better it should not last, for how could you ever get anything done if your man was draigling after you all the day long? No, no, it is more manlike that he should keep till his own kind. You may think you would like to have Rodie at your tail for ever, as when you were little bairns, and called the twins: but you would not, any more than he does– just wait a wee, and you will find that out for yourself: for it should surely be more so with your brother, who is bound to go away from you, when it is so with your man.”
“Then I think the disciples were right,” said Elsie, who was very learned in her Bible, as became a minister’s daughter. “And if the case of a man be so with his wife it would be better not to marry.”
“Well, it does not seem that folk think so,” said Marion, with a smile, “or it would not have gone on so long. Will you get me the finest dinner-napkins, the very finest ones, out of the big napery press at the head of the stairs?—for I am not sure that they are all marked properly, and time is running on, and everything must be finished.”
Marion was very great at marking, whether in white letters worked in satin stitch, or in small red ones done with engrained cotton, or finally with the little bottle of marking-ink and the hot iron with which Elsie still loved to help her—but in the case of the finest dinner-napkins, I need not say that marking-ink was not good enough, and the finest satin stitch was employed.
It need not be added that notwithstanding the reflection above stated Elsie felt a great interest in the revelations of the sister thus standing on the brink of a new life, and so soberly contemplating the prospect before her, not with any idea, as it seemed, of ideal blessedness, nor of having everything her own way.
Marion had been set thinking by the girl’s questions, and was ready to go on talking when Elsie returned with the pile of dinner-napkins in her arms, as high as her chin, which reposed upon them. It had been Mrs. Buchanan’s pride that no minister’s wife in the whole presbytery should have more exquisite linen, and both mother and daughter were gratified to think that the table would be set out for the dinner on the Monday after the Sacrament as few such tables were. The damask was very fine, of a beautiful small pattern, and shone like white satin. Elsie had a little talent for drawing, and she it was who drew the letters which Marion worked; so that this duty afforded occupation for both.
“It is a little strange, I do not deny,” said Marion, “that though they make such a work about us when they are courting and so forth, the men are more content in the society of their own kind than we are: a party that is all lassies, you weary of it.”
“Not me!” cried Elsie, all aflame.
“Wait till you are a little older,” said the sage Marion; “it’s even common to say; though I doubt if it is true, that after dinner we weary for them, if they are too long of coming up-stairs. But they never weary for us: and a man’s party is always the most joyful of all, and they like it above everything, and never wish that we were there. I must say I do not understand how this is, considering how dependent they are upon us for their comfort, and how helpless they are, more helpless than a woman ever is. Now, what my father would do if mamma did not see that he was brushed and trimmed up and kept in order, I cannot tell: and no doubt it will be just the same with Matthew. He will come to me crying, ‘May, there are no handkerchiefs in my drawer,’ or, ‘May, the button’s off my glove,’ as if it was my great fault—and when he is going off to preach anywhere, he will forget his very sermon if I don’t take care it’s put into his portmanteau.
“Well, my dear! I am no better than my mother, and that is what she has to do: but when they get a few men together, and can gossip away, and talk, and take their glass of toddy, then is the time when they really enjoy themselves. And so it is with the laddies, or