A Daughter of Fife

So there would be little comfort in threading the dirty ways of Argyle

Street to the Candleriggs; and he went to his hotel and ordered dinner,

then back to his father, and begged him to come and spend the last hours

of his delay with him. And John Campbell was delighted. "Things will go

tapsalteerie, Allan, but let them; we will have a bite and a cup of

kindness together." It was a very pleasant bite and cup, seasoned with

much love, and many cheerful confidences; and when Allan, at length, left

the dreary precincts of the old Caledonian Station, the last thing he saw

was his father's bare, white head, and that courtly upward movement of the

right hand which was his usual greeting or adieu; a movement which is as

much the natural salutation of a gentleman, as a nod is the natural one of

a vulgar mind.

John Campbell remained in Glasgow for the next three days, and Mary was

lonely enough at Meriton. It was a little earlier than they usually

removed to their city home, but she began to make preparations for that

event. In the course of these preparations, it was necessary to inspect

the condition of Allan's apartments. How desolate and forsaken they

looked! No other rooms in the house had the same sense of loss, even

though they had been in the same measure dismantled. The empty polished

grates, the covered furniture, the closed blinds, the absence of all the

little attributes of masculine life--pipes, slippers, newspapers, etc.--

were painfully apparent.

But no one had touched any of the numerous pictures of Maggie. They were

on the wall, the mantel, the table, the easel. She glanced at them, and

left the room; but after a moment's hesitation, she returned, drew up the

blinds, and stood resolutely before the large one upon the easel. "What is

there in her face that is so charmful?" she asked. "Why did it draw me

back here? Does my sense of justice forbid me to dislike without a reason,

and am I looking for one?" She went from picture to picture. She stood

long before some, she took one or two in her hand. She did not like the

girl, but she would not be unfair in her criticisms. "Whatever she is

doing, she is like a poem. I could not bake oat cakes, and look as if I

had stepped out of Gessner's Idyls. But she does. What limpid eyes! And

yet they have a look of sorrow in them--as if they had been washed clear

in tears--she is not laughing anywhere. I like that! If she were gay and

jocund in that picture how vulgar it would be.--If her splendid hair were

unbound, and her fine throat and neck without kerchief, and if she were

simpering with a finger on a dimple in her cheek, I know that I should

detest her. It is her serenity, her air of seriousness, which is so

enthralling--I wonder what her name is--it should be something grand, and

sweet, and solemn--I should think Theodora would suit her--What nonsense!

In a Fife fishing village every girl is either Jennie or Maggie or

Christie." So she mused, going from picture to picture, until they

acquired a kind of personality in her mind.