“If Mary is much in your way, she will go; but as Vi is a young lady now, perhaps Mary’s presence would be rather an advantage than otherwise. I put myself at your orders, young people, for the woods, or wherever you like.”
“Well,” said Val, with the composure of his age, “perhaps it might be as well if you would come too. Run to the larder, Violet, and look if there’s a pie. I’ll go and coax Jean for the old basket--the very old basket that we had on that wonderful day. Quick! and your cloak, Vi.” He rushed away from them like a whirlwind; and soon after, while the two ladies were still looking at each other in doubt whether he should be humoured or not, Jean’s voice was heard approaching round the corner from her nest.
“Pie! set you up with dainty dishes! Na, Mr Valentine, you’ll get nae pie from me, though you have the grace to come and ask for it this time; but I’ll make you some sandwiches, if you like, for you’ve a tongue like the very deil himself. Oh, ay--go away with your phrases. If you were not wanting something you would take little heed o’ your good Jean, your old friend.”
“No that ye’re an ill laddie, when a’s said. You’re not one of the mim-mouthed ones, like your father before you; but I wouldna say but you were more to be lippened to, with all your noise and your nonsense. There, go away with you. I’ll do the best I can, and you’ll take care of missie. Here’s your basket till ye, ye wild lad.”
Vi had grasped Mary’s arm in return when old Jean continued; but being pitiful, the girl in her happiness would not say anything to increase what she felt must be the pain of the woman by her side. Vi had divined easily enough that it was Valentine’s father of whom Mary spoke; and the child pitied the woman, who was old enough to be her mother. Ah, had it but been Valentine! He never would disappoint any one--never turn into a _dilettante_, loving china better than child or wife. She kissed Mary in a little outburst of pity--pity so angelic that Violet almost longed to change places with her, that she might see and prove for herself how different Valentine was. As for Mary, she made herself responsible for this mad expedition with a great confusion and mingling of feelings. She went, she said to herself, to prevent harm; but some strange mixture of a visionary maternity, and of a fellow-feeling quite incompatible with her mature age, was in her mind at the same time. She said to herself, with a sigh, as she went down the slope, that she might have been the boy’s mother, and let her heart soften to him, as she had never done before; though I think this same thought it was which had made her feel a little instinctive enmity to him, because he was not her son but another woman’s. How lightly the boy and girl tripped along over the woodland paths, waiting for her at every corner, chattering their happy nonsense, filling the sweet, mellow, waving woods with their laughter! They pushed down to the river, though the walk was somewhat longer than Mary cared for, and brought her to the glade in which the two runaways had eaten their dinner, and where Vi had been found asleep on Val’s shoulder. “It looks exactly as it did then; but how different we are!” cried Violet, on the warm green bank where her shoes and stockings had been put to dry. Mary sat down on the sunny grass, and watched them as they poked into all the corners they remembered, and called to them with maternal tremblings, when the boy once more led the girl across the stepping-stones to the great boulder by the side of which Esk foamed and flashed. She asked herself, was it possible that this bold brown boy would ever turn out to be like his father? and tried to recollect whether Richard had ever been so kind, so considerate of any one’s comfort as Val was of Vi’s. Was it perhaps possible that, instead of her own failure, this romance, so prettily begun, might come to such a climax of happiness as romances all feign to end in? Mary, I fear, though she was so sensible, became slightly foolish as she sat under the big beech, and looked at the two in the middle of the stream together, Esk roaring by over his rocks, and making the words with which she called them back quite inaudible. How handsome Val looked, and how pretty and poetic his little companion! The bank of wood opposite was all tinted with autumn colour, rich and warm. It was a picture which any painter would have loved, and it went to Mary’s heart.