AUNT CHRISTIAN.
SATURDAY passed at the McGregor farm, as Saturdays usually pass in New
England, in getting ready for Sunday. All that could be cooked was
cooked, and some extra dainties prepared, for Miss Baby, though she
made her Sunday a day of rest, did not choose to have it a fast-day.
"Don't you mean to go to the village to-day, Alick?" asked his sister
at dinner.
"No, I think not. I have some tinkering to do about the barn, so I
asked Bryant to bring the mail."
"I'll go down and bring up the mail, Uncle Alick," said Marion. "I
don't mind the walk a bit, and I dare say Aunt Baby has some other
errand."
"That I have, but I don't see how you can go very well this afternoon,"
said Miss Baby. "You want your new dress to-morrow, you know, and there
is the band to be put on the skirt and the fringe on the basque."
"Oh dear! Always something in the way whenever I want to do anything!"
said Marion, impatiently.
"You can't say I put the fringe in your way at least, Marie woman,"
said her aunt, smiling. "You know I did not like it at all; but now
you have calculated for it, the dress cannot be finished without it.
However, you can wear your gray merino or your new gingham if the day
should be warm."
"I think you might sew it on for me."
"I have my own to finish. However, I dare say my old one will serve me
once more."
Marion had the grace to feel ashamed of her proposition:
"You want yours more than I do mine, if anything. No, I will stay and
finish it. I'm sure I wish I had never bought the old fringe. I dare
say it is all out of fashion, and that is the reason it was so cheap.
Now, you needn't say 'I told you so,' Aunt Baby. It is vexatious enough
without that."
"Marie, my lass, you must not speak to your auntie Baby in that way,"
said old Hector, gravely. "It ill becomes one of your age to be so
fretted."
Grandfather was the one person in the household of whom Marion stood in
awe, and she subsided into a sulky silence, which she maintained till
Alick came in with the letters.
"Any for me, Uncle Alick?" said Marion, jumping up.
"Not this time; but one from Christian, Baby, and post-marked New York.
Bryant says Whitaker told him it came yesterday."
"From Christian! Then they have landed. Why, yes. This was written day
before yesterday, and—Why, Alick!"
"Well, what?"
"Christian says, 'We shall leave here Friday night; and if all goes
well, we shall be at home Saturday by the afternoon train.'"
"The afternoon train is in half an hour ago."
"I should not wonder if they had come already," said Baby. "They may be
waiting down at the village this minute."
"I will hitch up and go down directly," said Alick. "They must think
it very strange that nobody came to meet them. Don't you want to go,
Marie?"
A minute before, Marion had decided that every one was going to blame
her because she had forgotten to call at the post-office, and had
made up her mind to bear the reproaches in mournful silence. So she
naturally found it rather provoking to be offered a ride instead.
However, she was too much excited to sulk just now.
"I don't think I will, Uncle Alick; Aunt Baby will want some help,"
said she, amiably enough.
"Well, then, run and call grandfather and give him the news, and then
go up and open the windows of the east room and put on the sheets that
hang on the foot of the bed," said Miss Baby. "Make the room look
pretty and neat, and I will see to matters down here."
Marion went to work with both zeal and judgment, for she was by no
means wanting in sense when she could condescend to "give her mind to
small details," as she expressed it, or, in other words, to mind what
she was about. She made up the bed neatly with the white home-made
linen which Aunt Baby had been airing for a week, supplied the
wash-stand with water and clean towels, and put a nosegay of sweet
spring flowers on the table. When she had finished, she surveyed her
work with no very satisfied expression. Many people would have thought
the room an inviting one, but not so Marion. The home-made carpet
on the floor, the old-fashioned, high-post bedstead with its chintz
hangings, the high, round-fronted bureau with a desk at the top, were
all dreadfully old-fashioned and shabby in her eyes.
"I wish we ever could have anything like anybody else," said she to
herself. "How these old things will look to Aunt Christian after all
she has seen! I do think grandfather might open his purse far enough to
buy some new furniture. The Bryants are not so well off as we are, and
they bought new furniture for their front rooms, up-stairs and down."
She went down to the wide, cool kitchen, which was always the
dining-room in the warm weather, and found the tea-table already
prepared with a set of bluish-white china painted with little bunches
of roses and forget-me-not. The saucers, large and deep, and the little
round cups without handles, showed the date of their manufacture. Miss
Baby was in the milk-room skimming cream and making other hospitable
preparations, and a delicious odour of cooking came in from the back
kitchen.
Marion uttered an angry exclamation:
"Now, that is too bad, to set the table in the kitchen; I declare, I
won't have it so."
She at once began to reverse the arrangement when her grandfather came
in:
"What are you doing, lass?"
"I am going to set the table in the parlour," answered Marion; "I don't
think Uncle Duncan and Aunt Christian will want to eat in the kitchen."
"If Uncle Duncan and Aunt Christian don't like the ways of their
father's house, they can go elsewhere," said the old man. "You are too
upsetting, Marion; let the table be where it is."
"At any rate, I mean to take off that horrid blue earthenware and put
on the white china set Mr. Van Alstine sent us," said Marion; and she
hastened to accomplish her purpose while she had the kitchen to herself.
A shrewd smile passed over Miss Baby's face as she observed the change,
but she made no remark.
The white china was like other white china, neat and pretty, but
nothing more. Marion, however, surveyed it with great satisfaction,
and, the change accomplished, she grew more amiable.
"I wonder whether Uncle Duncan will look as I expect?" said she as she
stood watching from the window which commanded the road.
"That depends upon what you expect," said Miss Baby. "I have not seen
Duncan Campbell in fourteen years; but when he was last here, he looked
very much like the duke of Callum that then was."
"Is he really related to the duke, aunt?" asked Marion.
"Oh yes, I suppose so; all the Campbells are of one clan."
"It is odd that he should have married Aunt Christian, I think."
"Not odd at all, my lass," said old Hector. "There has been many an
intermarriage between the two clans in old time. The Campbells were aye
friends to our clan, and gave them shelter and protection when they
were chased from their own lands and hearths in the days of Rob Roy
that you have heard of."
"Those were splendid days to live in," said Marion, with enthusiasm; "a
man's life was worth something in those days."
"Do you think so? I don't. I should not like to get up some fine
morning and find out that the Shadbury folk had come over and carried
off all my cows, and very likely burned my barns into the bargain, and,
on the whole, I would rather raise sheep than steal them. But here come
our friends at last—a welcome sight."
"Like the duke! Then, of course, Uncle Duncan is tall and majestic;
dukes always are, I think," said Marion to herself as she hurried to
the door.
Alas for her romance! There was Uncle Alick holding the horses,
and a lady being helped down by a somewhat small, very wiry, and
determined-looking little gentleman, with—could it be? Yes, it was—with
red hair and a flowing red beard. Could that be Uncle Duncan? There was
no doubt about it. She had hardly picked herself up, so to speak, after
such a prodigious mental tumble, when she was folded in the arms of the
lady.
"And this must be Marion, I am sure, from her likeness to Eiley. You
all call her Marie, I hope."
"Sometimes," said Miss Barbara. "Eh, children, you have been a weary
while away. I began to think you never were coming."
"And what did we think, Sister Baby, when we landed at the Holford
station and found nobody to meet us?" said Doctor Campbell. "I thought
we gave our letter plenty of time."
"That was an accident. The letter came yesterday, but nobody happened
to go to the post-office," said Alick. "I met them just at the turn of
the road, Baby, trudging along in doleful style."
"Aweel, 'All's well that ends well' however," said Miss Baby. "Run up
to the east room, Christie, my bairn, and get ready for your supper. I
am sure you must want it."
"How homelike it all seems here!" said Christian when they were seated
around the table and old Hector had asked a fervent blessing on their
meeting. "I was afraid you would have taken to 'chamber sets' and other
view-fangled devices. It seems so cosy to see the old chintz hangings
and dark furniture just as I left it."
"Na, na," said the old man. "Ye 'll find no new fashions here, my
woman, not so long as I am to the fore."
"But, Baby, I do miss one thing," said Christian as she took her
cup. "Where is the dear old china, the bonny wee cups? I thought you
would have them out to celebrate our return, as you used to do our
birthdays. I hope nothing has happened to them, for, forbye they were
our grandmother's, that old china is priceless, just now."
"Well, you see, Mr. Van Alstine sent Marie the white china in a
present, so she naturally likes to show it," answered Miss Baby. "The
wee cups are all safe and sound, and you shall have them for your
breakfast, with your own basin for your porridge. I have never let any
one eat porridge from your basin, though we have them for breakfast
every morning.* But perhaps you have forgotten how to eat oatmeal?"
* Both "porridge" and "broth" are plural nouns in Scotch, and take
plural verbs and pronouns.
"Hoot, toot!" said Doctor Campbell, laughing. "Have we not just come
from 'the land o' cakes'?"
Meantime, Marion sat blushing scarlet at her own stupidity. What
could she have been thinking of? Of course the old china was the most
elegant. Did not Mrs. Tremaine so value the few bits she possessed
of it as to give them the most honoured place in the china cupboard?
How could she have been so stupid! And how lucky that no one knew of
her blunder but Aunt Baby, who had turned it off so cleverly! What
would Aunt Christian have said if she had only known? And so she sat
in silence, vexed and uncomfortable, while the others laughed and
chattered broad Scotch, and even Gaelic, which, however, nobody could
speak fluently but Hector and Duncan Campbell.
"Oh, and you must know we met Mr. Van Alstine and Eiley in New York."
"No! Where did you find them?"
"Came plump upon them the first thing before we had been ashore an
hour," said Doctor Campbell. "Van Alstine had come up to see about some
disembarkation of Southern hides or other savoury commodities of that
nature. He seems a fine fellow."
"He is a fine fellow," said Alick. "And how did you think Eiley was
looking?"
"Uncommonly well—far better than I ever saw her before," answered the
doctor.
"Yes, she looks like her own old self before—before Duncan remembers
her," said Christian, seemingly altering the construction of her
sentence on a second thought. "I have a letter and a parcel for you
in my bag, Marie. You have never been to visit your mother in her new
home, I believe?"
"No, ma'am."
"And Mr. Van Alstine has never found time to visit us but once," said
old Hector. "Then I was very much pleased with him. He seems a kind,
sensible man, and makes Eiley a good husband, though I often think she
must have a heavy handful with all yon lads, and not a lass among them
to help her."
"It is very nice sitting over the supper-table this fashion," said
Alick; "but if Christian and Duncan are to have their trunks to-night,
I must go after them, though what any one wants of so much luggage I
cannot guess."
"Hoot, toot, man Alick! Ye have no seen the half yet. Think how many
presents we had to remember. I wanted to have brought you a pair of
leather-eared, white-eyed Syrian goats, but I could find no convenient
way to pack them. I will go with you and help you load up."
"Your parcel is in my bag, Marie. I thought you would want to see it
directly," said Aunt Christian. "Baby is older, and can wait for hers.
The letter is from your mother, the present from your father."
Marion's curiosity was too much excited to allow her to take her usual
offence at hearing Mr. Van Alstine called her father. To her credit
be it said, however, she glanced over the letter before touching the
parcel. Joy of joys! The box contained a plain and simple but pretty
gold hunting-case watch and chain.
"A watch! A real live watch!" exclaimed Marion. "And such a beauty!
Look, Auntie Baby."
Miss Baby and her father both sympathized in Marion's delight over her
pretty present.
"I really think we must send Marie to Hemlock valley for a visit when
school is out, father," said Baby. "It is a shame she should not know
her brothers better."
"I am sure I should like to go, though the Van Alstine boys don't
seem the least like my brothers," said Marion, "any more than Mr.
Van Alstine does like my father. I don't approve at all of second
marriages, do you, Aunt Christian? It seems so heartless, somehow."
"You can hardly expect me to be a fair judge of that matter, all things
considered," said Aunt Christian, laughing and colouring.
And then only did Marion remember that Aunt Christian was both a second
wife and the child of a second marriage.
"Never mind, Marion dear you meant no harm," said Christian, perceiving
and pitying Marion's embarrassment. "Everybody does such things
sometimes. It isn't half so bad as asking a Turkish gentleman after his
wife and family, and I did that once."
"Why shouldn't you?" asked Baby.
"Oh, it is a dreadful breach of etiquette. I knew better, too; it
was sheer carelessness on my part. I have the poor man's photograph,
and will show it to you. I always fancy the picture looks at me with
something of the same expression of consternation. You should have seen
old Doctor G. look at me."
Marion was diverted from her mistake for the time, as Aunt Christian
meant she should be. She felt, as every one did who met Mrs. Campbell,
the indescribable charm of perfect good breeding. But more than once
during the evening she turned scarlet with shame as she remembered the
blunder she had made.
"How true it is that in the most festive scene there shines an
undertone of sadness! Even in our joyful meeting the serpent of
disappointment lurked in the brimming goblet. But such is the lot of
man." So wrote Marion in her journal that night. She did not say what
was the particular serpent in this case. Perhaps it was the fact that
an uncle who resembled a duke should be short and red haired.
She had a misgiving that her figure was rather mixed—that undertones
did not shine nor serpents inhabit goblets; so she closed the book
hastily without reading over what she had written, and went to bed to
dream of Turkish gentlemen with any number of wives.