Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 63, January, 1863», страница 13

THE STRATHSAYS

Mrs. Strathsay sat in her broad bower-window, looking down the harbor. A brave great window it was, and I mind me how many a dark summer's night, we two leaned over its edge and watched the soft flow of the River of the Cross, where its shadowy tide came up and lapped the stone foundations of that old house by the water-side,—I and Angus. Under us the rowers slipped the wherries and the yawls; in the channel the rafts floated down a slow freight from the sweet and savage pine-forests, and the fire they carried on their breasts, and the flames of their pitch-knots, threw out strange shadows of the steering raftsmen, and a wild bandrol of smoke flaring and streaming on the night behind them;—and yet away far up on the yonder side, beneath the hanging alders and the cedar-trees, the gundalows dropped down, great laden barges; and perhaps a lantern, hung high in the stern of some huge East-Indiaman at the wharves of the other town quite across the stream, showed us all its tracery and spires, dim webs of shadow stretched and woven against the solemn ground of the starlit sky, and taught us the limit of the shores. Ah, all things were sweet to us then! we were little but children,—Angus and I. And it's not children we are now, small's the pity! The joys of childhood are good, I trow; but who would exchange for them the proud, glad pulse of full womanhood?—not I. I mind me, too, that in those days the great world of which I used to hear them speak always seemed to me lying across the river, and over the fields and the hills, and away down and out by the skirts of the mystical sea; and on the morning when I set sail for Edinboro', I felt to be forever drawing nigher its skurry and bustle, its sins and pleasures and commotions.

We had no father,—Margray, or Effie, or Mary Strathsay, or I. He had brought his wife out from their home in Scotland to St. Anne's in the Provinces, and had died or ever I was born,—and I was the last of the weans. A high, keen spirit was his wife; she did not bend or break; a stroke that would have beggared another took no crumb from her cloth; she let the right in warehouses and wharves lie by, and lie by, and each year it paid her sterling income. None ever saw tear in those proud eyes of hers, when they brought in her husband dead, or when they carried him out; but every day at noon she went up into her own room, and whether she slept or whether she waked the two hours in that darkened place, there was not so much as a fly that sang in the pane to tell.

She was a fair, stately woman, taller than any of her girls, and with half the mind to hate them all because they were none of them a son. More or less the three were like her, lofty brows and shining hair and skin like morning light, the lave of them,—but as for me, I was my father's child. There's a portrait of him now, hangs on the chimney-pier: a slight man, and not tall,—the dark hair waves away on either side the low, clear brow,—the eyes deep-set, and large and dark and starry,—a carmine just flushing beneath the olive of the cheek,—the fine firm mouth just breaking into smiles; and I remember that that morning when I set sail for Edinboro', as I turned away from gazing on that face, and saw myself glinting like a painted ghost in the long dim mirror beside me, I said it indeed, and proudly, that I was my father's own child.

So she kissed us, Effie and me. Perhaps mine lingered the longer, for the color in my cheek was deeper tinct than Scotch, it was the wild bit of Southern blood that had run in her love's veins; when she looked at me, I gave her back hot phases of her passionate youth again,—so perhaps mine was the kiss that left the deeper dint.

Margray, and Mary Strathsay, had been back three years from school, and the one was just married,—and if she left her heart out of the bargain, what was that to me?—and the other was to reign at home awhile ere the fated Prince should come, and Effie and myself were to go over seas and take their old desks in the famous school at Edinboro'. The mother knew that she must marry her girls well, and we two younglings were sadly in Queen Mary Strathsay's way. Yes, Mrs. Strathsay lived for nought but the making of great matches for her girls; the grandees of the Provinces to-day sat down at her board and to-morrow were to pay her tribute, scot and lot; four great weddings she meant should one by one light up her hearth and leave it lonely with the ashes there. But of them all she counted on the last, the best, the noblest for Alice,—that was I.

Old Johnny Graeme was the partner in what had been my father's house, and for fifteen years it had gone prospering as never house did yet, and making Mrs. Strathsay bitterer; and Johnny Graeme, a little wizened warlock, had never once stopped work long enough to play at play and reckon his untold gold.

Just for that summer, too, some ships of the royal fleet anchored there off Campobello, and the Honorable Charles Seavern, third son of an Earl, and professional at his cups, swung them at his will, and made holiday meanwhile among the gay and willing folk of all the little towns around.

There was another yet, a youth growing up to fine estates away off beyond Halifax. His father sat in the Queen's own Parliament for the Colonies, had bent to the knightly accolade, and a change of ministry or of residence might any day create Sir Brenton peer; his mother had been Mrs. Strathsay's dearest friend:—this child who off and on for half his life had made her house his home and Alice his companion, while in the hearts of both children Mrs. Strathsay had cautiously planted and nursed the seed,—a winning boy, a noble lad, a lordly man.

If Margray had not married old Johnny Graeme, it would have broken Mrs. Strathsay's will; the will was strong; she did, she married him. If Mary, with her white moonsheen of beauty, did not bewitch the senses of Captain Seavern, it would break Mrs. Strathsay's pride; and few things were stronger than Mrs. Strathsay's pride,—unless 't were Mary's own. If Effie–but that's nothing to the purpose. If Alice did not become the bride of Angus Ingestre, it would break Mrs. Strathsay's heart. God forgive me! but I bethought me once that her heart was the weakest member in all her body.

So she kissed us, as I say, and we slid down the ten miles of river, and went sailing past the busy islands and over the broad deeps and out of the day and into the night, and then two little orphans cried themselves to sleep with their arms about each other's necks. After all, it was not much like my picture of the great world, this lonely sea, this plunging up from billow on to billow, this burrowing down in the heart of green-gloomed hollows, this rocking and creaking and straining, this buoyant bounding over the crests,—yet the freedom, the monotony, the wild career of the winds fired me; it set my blood a-tingle; I liked it. And then I thought of Angus, rocked to sleep each night, as he was now, in his ocean-cradle. But once at school, and the world was round me; it hummed up from the streets, it boomed down from the spires. I became a part of it, and so forgot it. To Effie there were ever stealing rumors of yet a world beyond, of courts and coronets, of satin shimmer and glitter of gems, but they glanced off from me,—and other than thus I have never yet found that great world that used to lie over the river.

We had been at school a happy while, and but for constant letters, and for the brief visit of Mrs. Strathsay, who had journeyed over the Atlantic for one last look at sweet home-things, and to see how all went with us, and then had flitted back again,—but for that, home would have seemed the veriest dream that ever buzzed in an idle brain: would so have seemed to other maidens, not to us, for the fibres of the Strathsay heart were threads that never wore thin or parted. Two twelvemonths more, and we should cross the sea ourselves at last; and wearying now of school a bit, all our visions centred in St. Anne's, and the merry doings, the goings and comings, that we heard of there; and it seemed to me as if home were to be the beginning of life, as erst it had seemed that in school we should find the world.

It was the vacation of the long summer term; there was packing and padlocking to go each on her way, and the long dormitories rang with shrill clamor. They all had a nest to seek. Effie was already gone away with her chief crony, whose lady-mother, a distant kinswoman of our own, fancied the girl's fair countenance. I was to join them in a week or two,—not yet, because I had wished to send home the screens painted on white velvet, and they wanted yet a sennight's work, and I knew Mrs. Strathsay would be proud of them before the crackle of the autumn fires. The maids ran hither and yon, and the bells pealed, and the knocker clashed, and the coaches rolled away over the stone pave of the court-yard, and there was embracing and jesting and crying, when suddenly all the pleasant hubbub stood still, for Miss Dunreddin was in the hall, and her page behind her, and she beckoned me from my post aloft on a foot-board, summoning the deserters before me and awarding them future expiations, amidst all manner of jeering and jinking and laughter.

A gentleman from the Provinces to see me in the little parlor: he had brought us letters from home, and after Miss Dunreddin had broken the seals she judged we might have them, and I was at liberty for an hour, and meantime Angus Ingestre awaited me. Angus! I sprang down the stairs, my cheeks aglow, my heart on my lips, and only paused, finger on lock, wondering and hesitating and fearing, till the door was flung open, and I drawn in with two hands shut fast on my own, and two eyes—great blue Ingestre eyes—looking down on me from the face so far above: for he towered like a Philistine.

"And is it Angus?" I cried. For how was I to know the boy I had left in a midshipman's jacket, in this mainmast of a man, undress-uniform and all?

"I've no need to ask, Is it Alice?" he answered. "The same little peach of a chin!"

"Nay, but, Angus,—'t will never do,—and I all but grown up!"

"Not my little maid any longer, then?"

But so trembling and glad was I to see him, that I dared no more words, for I saw the tears glistening in my eyelashes and blinding me with their dazzling flashes.

So he took me to a seat, and sat beside me, and waited a minute; and after that waiting it was harder to speak than it had been before, and every thought went clean out of my head, and every word, and I stared at my hands till I seemed to see clear through them the pattern of my dress, and at the last I looked up, and there he had been bending forward and scanning me all the while; and then Angus laughed, and caught up my hand and pretended to search it narrowly.

"Ah, yes, indeed," said he, "she is reading the future in her palm, reading it backward, and finding out what this Angus Ingestre has to do with her fate!"

"Nay, but,"–said I, and then held fast again.

"Here's a young woman that's keen to hear of her home, of her sisters, of Queen Mary Strathsay, and of Margray's little Graeme!"

"What do I care for Johnny Graeme? the little old man!"

"What, indeed? And you'll not be home a day and night before you'll be tossing and hushing him, and the moon'll not be too good for him to have, should he cry for it!"

"Johnny Graeme?"

"No. Angus Graeme!"

"Oh!—Margray has a son? Why didn't you tell me before?"

"When you were so eager to know!"

"It's all in my letters, I suppose. But Margray has a son, and she's named it for you, and her husband let her?"

"'Deed, he wasn't asked."

"Why not?"

"Come, child, read your letters."

"Nay, I've but a half-hour more with you; that was the second quarter struck; I'll read them when you're gone.—Why not?"

"Johnny Graeme is dead."

That sobered me a thought.

"And Margray?" I asked.

"Poor Margray,—she feels very badly."

"You don't mean to say"–

"That she cared for him? But I do."

"Now, Angus Ingestre, I heard Margray tell her mother she'd liefer work on the roads with a chain and ball than marry him! It's all you men know of women. Love Johnny Graeme! Oh, poor man, rest his soul! I'm sore sorry for him. He's gone where there's no gold to make, unless they smelt it there; and I'm not sure but they do,—sinsyne one can see all the evil it's the root of, and all the woe it works,—and he bought Margray, you know he did, Angus!"

"It's little Alice talking so of her dead brother!"

"He's no brother of mine; I never took him, if Margray did. Brother indeed! there's none such,—unless it's you, Angus!" And there all the blood flew into my cheeks, and they burned like two fires, and I was fain to clap my palms upon them.

"No," said Angus. "I'm not your brother, Ailie darling, and never wish to be,—but"–

"And Margray?" I questioned, quickly,—the good Lord alone knew why. "Poor Margray! tell me of her. Perhaps she misses him; he was not, after all, so curst as Willy Scott. Belike he spoke her kindly."

"Always," said Angus, gnawing in his lip a moment ere the word. "And the child changed him, Mary Strathsay says. But perhaps you're right; Margray makes little moan."

"She was aye a quiet lass. Poor Johnny!—I'm getting curst myself. Well, it's all in my letters. But you, Angus dear, how came you here?"

"I? My father came to London; and being off on leave from my three years' cruise, I please myself in passing my holiday, and spend the last month of it in Edinboro', before rejoining the ship."

All my moors and heather passed like a glamour. The green-wood shaws would be there another year,—Angus was here to-day. I cast about me, and knew that Miss Dunreddin would speed away to take her pleasure, and there'd be none left but the governess and the painting-mistress, with a boarder or two like myself,—and as for the twain, I could wind them round my thumb.

"Oh, Angus," I said, breathlessly, "there's Arthur's Seat, and the palaces, and the galleries and gardens,—it'll be quite as good as the moors; there'll be no Miss Dunreddin, and you can stay here all the leelang simmer's day!"

He smiled, as he answered,—

"And I suppose those scarlet signals at the fore signify"–

"Nothing!"

"Fast colors, I see."

"It's my father's own color, and I'm proud of it,—barring the telltale trouble."

"You're proud," said he, absently, standing up to go, "that you are the only one of them all that heirs him?"

"Not quite. It's the olive in my father's cheek that darkened his wife's yellow curls into Mary Strathsay's chestnut ones. And she's like me in more than that, gin she doesn't sell hersel' for siller and gowd."

"I'll tell you what. Mrs. Strathsay is over-particular in speech. She'll have none of the broad Highland tongue about her. It's a daily struggle that she has, not to strike Nurse Nannie dumb, since she has infected you all with her dialect. A word in time. Now I must go. To-morrow night I'll come and take you to the play, Miss Dunreddin or no Miss Dunreddin. But sing to me first. It's a weary while since I used to hear that voice crooning itself to sleep across the hall with little songs."

So I sang the song he chose, "My love, she's but a lassie yet"; and he took the bunch of bluebells from my braids, and was gone.

The next night Angus was as good as his word. Miss Dunreddin was already off on her pleasuring, he took the gray little governess for duenna, and a blither three never sat out a tragedy, or laughed over wine and oysters in the midst of a garden with its flowers and fountains afterwards. 'T was a long day since the poor little woman had known such merrymaking; and as for me, this playhouse, this mimicry of life, was a new sphere. We went again and again,—sometimes the painting-mistress, too; then she and the governess fell behind, and Angus and I walked at our will. Other times we wandered through the gay streets, or we went up on the hill and sat out the sunsets, and we strolled through the two towns, high and low. The days sped, the long shine of the summer days, and, oh, my soul was growing in them like a weed in the sun!

It never entered my happy little thoughts all this time that what was my delight might yet be Angus's dole; for, surely, a school-girl is so interesting to no one else as herself, while she continually comes upon all the fresh problems in her nature. So, when a day passed that I heard no step in the hall, no cheery voice rousing the sleepy echoes with my name, I was restless enough. Monday, Tuesday,—no Angus. I ought to have thought whether or no he had found some of his fine friends, and if they had no right to a fragment of his time; yet I was but a child. The third day dawned and passed, and at length, sitting there among the evening shadows in the long class-room, a little glumly, the doors clanged as of old, a loud, laughing sentence was tossed up to the little gray governess at the stair-head, then, three steps at a time, he had mounted, and was within,—and what with my heart in my throat and its bewildered beating, I could not utter a word. I but sprang to the window and made as if I had been amusing myself there: I would have no Angus Ingestre be thinking that he was all the world to me, and I nought to him.

"A little ruffled," said he, at the saucy shake of my head. "Well, I sha'n't tell you where I've been. I've the right to go into the country for a day, have I not? What is it to Alice Strathsay how often I go to Loch Rea? There's something Effie begged me to get you!" And he set down a big box on the table.

So, then, he had been to see Effie. It was fair enough, and yet I couldn't help the jealous pang. I wouldn't turn my head, though I did wonder what was in the big box, but, holding out my hand backward, I said,—

"Well, it's no odds where you've been, so long's you're here now. Come and lean out of the window by me,—it's old times,—and see the grand ladies roll by in their coaches, some to the opera, some to the balls."

"Why should I watch the grand ladies roll by, when there's one so very much grander beside me," he said, laughing, but coming. And so we stood together there and gazed down on the pretty sight, the beautiful women borne along below in the light of the lamps, with their velvets, their plumes, and their jewels, and we made little histories for them all, as they passed.

"They are only the ugly sisters," said Angus, at length. "But here is the true Cinderella waiting for her godmother. Throw your cape over your hair, Ailie dear; the dew falls, and you'll be taking cold. There, it's the godmother herself, and you'll confess it, on seeing what miracles can be worked with this little magic-lantern of yours. Come!" and he proceeded to open the box.

But I waited a minute still; it was seldom the sumptuous coaches rolled through this by-way which they had taken to-night in their gay procession, since the pavers had left the broad street beyond blocked up for the nonce, and I liked to glimpse this little opening into a life just beyond my sphere.

"You are shivering in your thin frock at the window, Miss Strathsay," said the little gray governess.

"Come here, Ailie, and hold the candle," said Angus. "Effie has great schemes of terror with this in the dormitories, o' nights. There!" and he whirled the lighted match out of the window.

Just then I turned, the little flame fell on my muslin sleeve,—a cloud of smoke, a flash, a flare, the cape round my face soared in blaze, it seemed that I was wrapt in fire!

Angus caught me on the instant, crushed the burning things with his fingers, had his coat round me, had all drenched in the water that the governess had raced after, and then I knew no more.

So the women put me to bed, while Angus brought the surgeon; then they forbade him the room, and attended to my wants; but all night long he paced the halls and heard my moans, and by daybreak I was stupefied. He waited a week, but they would not suffer him to see me, and then his leave of absence had expired.

One night I woke; I felt that the room was darkly rich with the star-lighted gloom, but I could see nothing, for all the soft, cool linen folds; and lying there half-conscious for a time, I seemed to feel some presence in the door-way there.

"Angus, is that you?" I asked.

"Oh, Ailie darling!" he cried, and came forward and fell on his knees by my side, and covered my hands with his tears.

"Poor Angus!" I said, in my muffled way, and I tried half to rise, and I was drawing away a hand that I might dash the tears off his face.

Then of a sudden it came over me in one great torrid flush, and I fell back without a word.

But at the moment, the little gray governess came in again from her errand, and he went. 'T was no use his waiting, though he lingered still a day or two in hopes to see me; but my head was still on my pillow. His time was more than up, he must to the ship, so he left me store of messages and flowers and glass-bred grapes, and was off.

Time wore away, I got about again, and all was as before, long ere the girls came back, or Miss Dunreddin. I went near no moors, I looked no more out of my window, I only sat on the stool by my bedside and kept my face hid in the valances; and the little gray governess would sit beside me and cheer me, and tell me it was not so bad when all was said, and beauty was but little worth, and years would efface much, that my hair was still as dark and soft, my eyes as shining, my–But all to what use? Where had flown the old Strathsay red from my cheek, where that smooth polish of brow, where–I, who had aye been the flower of the race, the pride of the name, could not now bide to brook my own glance in the glass.

But the worst of it all would be, I thought,—not recking the worse to come,—when the girls flocked back. How I dreaded it, how I sought to escape their mock and go home, poor fool! but the little gray governess saw them all first, I must believe, for there was not a quip or a look askance, and they treated me as bairns treat a lamb that has tint its mother. And so seeing I had lost my fair skin, I put myself to gain other things in its place, and worked hard at my stents, at my music, my books. I grew accustomed to things, and would forget there had been a change, and, being young, failed to miss the being bonny; and if I did not miss it, who should? and they all were so kind, that the last year of school was the happiest of the whole. Thus the time drew near my eighteenth summer, and Miss Dunreddin had heard of a ship bound our way from Glasgow, and we were to leave the town with all its rare old histories, and speed through nights and days of seafaring to St. Anne's by the water-side, to the old stone house with its windows overhanging the River of the Cross.

So the old brig slid lazily up the river, beneath the high and beauteous banks, and as between the puffs of wind we lay there in the mid-channel, the mate,—a dark, hawk-eyed man, at whom Effie liked well to toss a merry mock, and with whom, sometimes stealing up, she would pace the deck in hours of fair weather,—a man whose face was like a rock that once was smitten with sunshine, never since,—a sad man, with a wrathful lip even when he spoke us fair,—the mate handed me his glass and bade me look, while he went to the side and bent over there with Effie, gazing down into the sun-brown, idle current. And I pointed it,—and surely that was the old stone gable in its woodbines,—and surely, as we crept nearer, the broad bower-window opened before me,—and surely a lady sat there, a haughty woman with the clustered curls on her temple, her needle poised above the lace-work in the frame, and she gazing dreamily out, out at the water, the woods, the one ship wafting slowly up,—shrouds that had been filled with the airs of half a hemisphere, hull that had ere now been soaked in spicy suns and summers,—and all the glad tears gushed over my eyes and darkened me from seeing. So, as I said, Mrs. Strathsay sat in her broad bower-window looking down the harbor, and a ship was coming up, and Effie and I stood on its deck, our hearts full of yearning. Mine was, at least, I know. And I could but snatch the glass up, every breathing, as we went, and look, and drop it, for it seemed as if I must fly to what it brought so near, must fly to fling my arms about the fair neck bending there, to feel the caressing finger, to have that kiss imprint my cheek once more,—so seldom her lips touched us!

They lowered us down in boats at last, the captain going ashore with us, the porters following with our luggage. The great hall-door below stood open, and the familiar servants were there to give us greeting, and we stayed but for a hand's-shake, except that my old nurse, where she caught it, wet my shawl with her sudden weeping, so that Effie had run up the stairs before me, and was in the drawing-room and was folded in the tender grasp, and had first received the welcome. A moment after, and I was among them. Mrs. Strathsay stood there under the chandelier in the sunshine, with all its showering rainbow-drops,—so straight and stately she, so superb and splendid,—her arms held out,—and I ran forward, and paused, for my veil had blown over my face, to throw it back and away,—and, with the breath, her shining blue eyes opened and filled with fire, her proud lips twisted themselves in pain, she struck her two hands together, crying out, "My God! how horrible!" and fainted.

Mrs. Strathsay was my mother. I might have fallen, too,—I might have died, it seems to me, with the sudden snap my heart gave,—but all in a word I felt Mary Strathsay's soft curls brushing about my face, and she drew it upon her white bosom, and covered the poor thing with, her kisses. Margray was bending over my mother, with the hartshorn in her hands, and I think—the Lord forgive her!—she allowed her the whole benefit of its battery, for in a minute or two Mrs. Strathsay rose, a little feeble, wavered an instant, then warned us all away and walked slowly and heavily from the place, up the stairs, and the door of her own room banged behind her and hasped like the bolt of a dungeon.

I drank the glass of wine Mary brought me, and tried hard not to sadden them, and to be a woman.

"Poor thing!" said Margray, when she'd taken off my bonnet and looked at the fashion of my frock, "but you're sorely altered. Never fret,—it's worth no tear; she counted much on your likely looks, though,—you never told us the accident took them."

"I thought you'd know, Margray."

"Oh, for sure, there's many escapes.—And this is grenadine? I'd rather have the old mohair.—Well, well, give a man luck and throw him into the sea; happen you'll do better than us all. If my mother cannot marry you as she'd choose, you'll come to less grief, I doubt." And Margray heaved a little sigh, and ran to tumble up her two-year-old from his rose-lined basket.

I went home with Margray that night; I couldn't bear to sleep in the little white bed that was mine when a happy child, and with every star that rose I felt a year the older; and on the morrow, when I came home, my mother was still in the same taking, so I went back again and whiled the day off as I could; and it was not so hard, for Mary Strathsay came over, and Effie, and there was so much to tell, and so much to ask, and Effie had all along been so full of some grand company she had met that last year in Edinboro', that the dinner-bells rang ere we thought of lunch; but still a weight lay on me like a crime on conscience. But by the next dawning I judged 't was best that I should gather courage and settle things as they were to be. Margray's grounds joined our own, and I snatched up the babe, a great white Scotch bairn, and went along with him in my arms under the dripping orchard-boughs, where still the soft glooms lingered in the early morn. And just ere I reached the wicket, a heavy step on the garden-walk beyond made my heart plunge, and I came face to face with my mother. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, I did not dare glance up, yet I felt her eyes upon me as if she searched some spot fit for her fine lips, and presently her hand was on my head, and the kiss had fallen on my hair, and then she gathered me into her arms, and her tears rained down and anointed my face like chrism. And I just let the wondering wean slip to the grass, and I threw my arms about her and cried, "Oh, mother, mother, forgive me, and love me just a little!" It was but a breathing; then I remembered the child at my feet, and raised him, and smiled back on Mrs. Strathsay, and went on with a lighter heart to set my chests and drawers straight.

The days slipped into weeks, and they were busy, one and all, ordering Effie's wardrobe; for, however much I took the lead, she was the elder and was to be brought out. My mother never meant to bring me out, I think,—she could not endure the making of parade, and the hearing the Thomsons and Lindsays laugh at it all, when 't was but for such a flecked face,—she meant I should slip into life as I could. We had had the seamstresses, and when they were gone sometimes Mrs. Strathsay came and sat among us with her work;—she never pricked finger with fell or hem, but the heaviest task she took was the weaving of the white leaf-wreaths in and out the lace-web before her there,—and as we stitched, we talked, and she lent a word how best an old breadth could be turned, another gown refitted,—for we had to consider such things, with all our outside show of establishment.

Margray came running through the garden that afternoon, and up where we sat, and over her arm was fluttering no end of gay skirts and ribbons.

"I saved this pink muslin—it's real Indian, lascar lawn, fine as cobweb—for you, Alice," she said. "It's not right to leave it to the moths,—but you'll never need it now. It shall be Effie's, and she'll look like a rose-bud in it,—with her yellow locks floating."

"Yes," said I.

"You'll not be wanting such bright things now, child; you'll best wear grays, and white, and black."