'Now, please, just stop here for a minute or two, said Margaret.
'These are the cottages that haunted me so during the rainy
fortnight, reproaching me for not having sketched them.' 'Before they tumbled down and were no more seen. Truly, if they
are to be sketched--and they are very picturesque--we had better
not put it off till next year. But where shall we sit?' 'Oh! You might have come straight from chambers in the Temple,'
instead of having been two months in the Highlands! Look at this
beautiful trunk of a tree, which the wood-cutters have left just
in the right place for the light. I will put my plaid over it,
and it will be a regular forest throne.' 'With your feet in that puddle for a regal footstool! Stay, I
will move, and then you can come nearer this way. Who lives in
these cottages?' 'They were built by squatters fifty or sixty years ago. One is
uninhabited; the foresters are going to take it down, as soon as
the old man who lives in the other is dead, poor old fellow!
Look--there he is--I must go and speak to him. He is so deaf you
will hear all our secrets.' The old man stood bareheaded in the sun, leaning on his stick at
the front of his cottage. His stiff features relaxed into a slow
smile as Margaret went up and spoke to him. Mr. Lennox hastily
introduced the two figures into his sketch, and finished up the
landscape with a subordinate reference to them--as Margaret
perceived, when the time came for getting up, putting away water,
and scraps of paper, and exhibiting to each other their sketches.
She laughed and blushed Mr. Lennox watched her countenance.
'Now, I call that treacherous,' said she. 'I little thought you
were making old Isaac and me into subjects, when you told me to
ask him the history of these cottages.' 'It was irresistible. You can't know how strong a temptation it
was. I hardly dare tell you how much I shall like this sketch.' He was not quite sure whether she heard this latter sentence
before she went to the brook to wash her palette. She came back
rather flushed, but looking perfectly innocent and unconscious.
He was glad of it, for the speech had slipped from him
unawares--a rare thing in the case of a man who premeditated his
actions so much as Henry Lennox.
The aspect of home was all right and bright when they reached it.
The clouds on her mother's brow had cleared off under the
propitious influence of a brace of carp, most opportunely
presented by a neighbour. Mr. Hale had returned from his
morning's round, and was awaiting his visitor just outside the
wicket gate that led into the garden. He looked a complete
gentleman in his rather threadbare coat and well-worn hat.