Big Game - A Story for Girls

For the next two days it rained incessantly, and Margot sat in the

little parlour of the inn talking to Mrs Macalister, or rather

listening while Mrs Macalister talked, and playing draughts with Mr

Macalister, who had relapsed into hopeless gloom of mind, and was with

difficulty prevented from rushing home by the first train.

"The doctor said we were to keep him from the office for a good month at

least, and there's not three weeks of the time gone by. If he goes back

now, what will be the use of spending all this money on travelling and

keep, and what not? It will be all clean waste," sighed the poor dame

sadly. "He's a bit fratchety and irritable, I'm free to admit, but you

should not judge a man when his nerves are upset. There's not a better

man on earth than Mr Macalister when he has his health. It's dull for

a man-body to be shut up in an inn, without the comforts of home, and

feeling all the time that there's money going out. It is different when

he can be out and about with his fishing and what not.--If you could

just manage to amuse him a bit, like a good lassie!..."

The good lassie nodded reassuringly into the troubled, kindly face.

"I'll do my best. I have an old father of my own, who has nerves too,

and I am used to amusing him. I'll take Mr Macalister in hand till the

weather clears."

It was not a congenial task, for, truth to tell, Mr Macalister was not

a beguiling object, with his lugubrious face, lack-lustre eyes, and

sandy, outstanding whiskers; nor did he in the first instance betray any

gratitude for the attention bestowed upon him. A stolid glance over his

spectacles was his first response to Margot's overtures; his next, a

series of grunts and sniffs, and when at last he condescended to words

it was invariably to deride or throw doubt on her statements.

"Tut, nonsense! Who told you that? I would think so, indeed!" followed

by another and more determined retreat behind the Glasgow Herald.

In the corner of the room Mrs Macalister sat meekly knitting, never

venturing a look upwards so long as her spouse was in view, but urging

Margot onward by nods and winks and noiseless mouthings, the moment that

she was safe from observation.

It had its comic side, but it was also somewhat pathetic. These two

good commonplace souls had travelled through life together side by side

for over thirty years, and, despite age, infirmity, and "nearves", were

still lovers at heart. Before the wife's eyes the figure of "Mr

Macalister" loomed so large that it blocked out the entire world; to

him, even in this hour of depression, "the wife" was the one supreme

authority.