They came at last. Arthur and Will met them on the other side of the
river, and Graeme and Rose would fain have done the same, but because of
falling rain, and because of other reasons, it was thought not best for
them to go.
It was a very quiet meeting--a little restrained and tearful just at
first; but that wore away, and Janet's eyes rested on the bairns from
whom she had been so long separated with love and wonder and earnest
scrutiny. They had all changed, she said. Arthur was like his father;
Will was like both father and mother. As for Rosie--
"Miss Graeme, my dear," said Mrs Snow, "I think Rosie is nearly as
bonny as her sister Marian," and her eye rested on the girl's blushing
face with a tender admiration that was quite as much for the dead as for
the living. Graeme had changed least of all, she said; and yet in a
little she found herself wondering whether, after all, Graeme had not
changed more than any of them.
As for Fanny she found herself in danger of being overlooked in the
general joy and excitement, and went about jingling her keys, and rather
ostentatiously hastening the preparations for the refreshment of the
travellers. She need not have been afraid. Her time was coming. Even
now she encountered an odd glance or two from Mr Snow, who was walking
off his excitement in the hall. That there was admiration mingled with
the curiosity they expressed was evident, and Fanny relented. What
might soon have become a pout on her pretty lip changed to a smile.
They were soon on very friendly terms with each other, and before Janet
had got through with her first tremulous recognition of her bairns, Mr
Snow fancied he had made a just estimate of the qualities--good--and not
so good--of the pretty little housekeeper.
After dinner all were more at their ease. Mr Snow walked up and down
the gallery, past the open window, and Arthur sat there beside him.
They were not so far withdrawn from the rest but that they could join in
the conversation that went on within. Fanny, tired of the dignity of
housekeeping, brought a footstool and sat down beside Graeme; and Janet,
seeing how naturally and lovingly the hand of the elder sister rested on
the pretty bowed head, gave the little lady more of her attention than
she had hitherto done, and grew rather silent in the scrutiny. Graeme
grew silent too. Indeed she had been rather silent all the afternoon;
partly because it pleased her best to listen, and partly because she was
not always sure of her voice when she tried to speak.
She was not allowed to be silent long, however, or to fall into
recollections too tender to be shared by them all. Rose's extraordinary
restlessness prevented that. She seemed to have lost the power of
sitting still, and flitted about from one to another; now exchanging a
word with Fanny or Will, now joining in the conversation that was going
on between Mr Snow and Arthur outside. At one moment she was hanging
over Graeme's chair, at the next, kneeling at Mrs Snow's side; and all
the time with a face so radiant that even Will noticed it, and begged to
be told the secret of her delight.
The truth was, Rose was having a little private jubilation of her own.
She would not have confessed it to Graeme, she was shy of confessing it
to herself, but as the time of Mrs Snow's visit approached, she had not
been quite free from misgivings. She had a very distinct recollection
of their friend, and loved her dearly. But she found it quite
impossible to recall the short active figure, the rather scant dress,
the never-tiring hands, without a fear that the visit might be a little
disappointing--not to themselves. Janet would always be Janet to them--
the dear friend of their childhood, with more real worth in her little
finger than there was in ten such fine ladies as Mrs Grove. But Rose,
grew indignant beforehand, as she imagined the supercilious smiles and
forced politeness of that lady, and perhaps of Fanny too, when all this
worth should appear in the form of a little, plain old woman, with no
claim to consideration on account of externals.
But that was all past now. And seeing her sitting there in her full
brown travelling-dress, her snowy neckerchief and pretty quaint cap,
looking as if her life might have been passed with folded hands in a
velvet arm-chair, Rose's misgivings gave place to triumphant
self-congratulation, which was rather uncomfortable, because it could
not well be shared. She had assisted at the arrangement of the contents
of the travelling trunk in wardrobe and bureau, and this might have
helped her a little.
"A soft black silk, and a grey poplin, and such lovely neckerchiefs and
handkerchiefs of lawn--is not little Emily a darling to make her mother
look so nice? And such a beauty of a shawl!--that's the one Sandy
brought."
And so Rose came down-stairs triumphant, without a single drawback to
mar the pleasure with which she regarded Janet as she sat in the
arm-chair, letting her grave admiring glances fall alternately on Graeme
and the pretty creature at her feet. All Rosie's admiration was for
Mrs Snow.
"Is she not just like a picture sitting there?" she whispered to Will,
as she passed him.
And indeed Rosie's admiration was not surprising; she was the very Janet
of old times; but she sat there in Fanny's handsome drawing-room, with
as much appropriateness as she had ever sat in the manse kitchen long
ago, and looked over the vases and elegant trifles on the centre-table
to Graeme with as much ease and self-possession as if she had been "used
with" fine things all her life, and had never held anxious counsels with
her over jackets and trowsers, and little half-worn stockings and shoes.
And yet there was no real cause for surprise. For Janet was one of
those whose modest, yet firm self-respect, joined with a just
appreciation of all worldly things, leaves to changing circumstances no
power over their unchanging worth.
That Mr Snow should spend the time devoted to their visit within four
walls, was not to be thought of. The deacon, who, in the opinion of
those who knew him best, "had the faculty of doing 'most anything," had
certainly not the faculty of sitting still in a chair like other people.
The hall or the gallery was his usual place of promenade, but when the
interest of the conversation kept him with the rest, Fanny suffered
constant anxiety as to the fate of ottomans, vases and little tables. A
judicious, re-arrangement of these soon gave him a clearer space for his
perambulations; but a man accustomed to walk miles daily on his own
land, could not be expected to content himself long within such narrow
limits. So one bright morning he renewed the proposal, made long
before, that Will should show him Canada.
Up to a comparatively recent period, all Mr Snow's ideas of the country
had been got from the careful reading of an old "History of the French
and Indian War." Of course, by this time he had got a little beyond the
belief that the government was a military despotism, that the city of
Montreal was a cluster of wigwams, huddled together within a circular
enclosure of palisades, or that the commerce of the country consisted in
an exchange of beads, muskets, and bad whiskey for the furs of the
Aborigines. Still his ideas were vague and indistinct, not to say
disparaging, and he had already quite unconsciously excited the
amusement of Will and the indignation of Rose, by indulging in remarks
indicative of a low opinion of things in general in the Queen's
dominions. So when he proposed that Will should show him Canada, Rose
looked gravely up and asked,--
"Where will you go first, Will? To the Red river or Hudson's Bay or to
Nova Scotia? You must be back to lunch."