Soon Colonel Keith was knocking at Ermine's door, and Rose was clinging
to him, glowing and sparkling with shy ecstasy; while, without sitting
down again after her greeting, Rachel resolutely took leave, and walked
away with firm steps, ruminating on her determination not to encourage
meetings in Mackarel Lane.
"Better than I expected!" exclaimed Colonel Keith, after having
ushered her to the door in the fulness of his gratitude. "I knew it was
inevitable that she should be here, but that she should depart so fast
was beyond hope!"
"Yes," said Ermine, laughing, "I woke with such a certainty that she
would be here and spend the first half hour in the F. U. E, E. that I
wasted a great deal of resignation. But how are you, Colin? You are much
thinner! I am sure by Mrs. Tibbie's account you were much more ill than
you told me."
"Only ill enough to convince me that the need of avoiding a northern
winter was not a fallacy, and likewise to make Tibbie insist on coming
here for fear Maister Colin should not be looked after. It is rather
a responsibility to have let her come, for she has never been farther
south than Edinburgh, but she would not be denied. So she has been to
see you! I told her you would help her to find her underlings. I thought
it might be an opening for that nice little girl who was so oppressed
with lace-making."
"Ah! she has gone to learn wood-cutting at the F. U. E. E.; but I hope
we have comfortably provided Tibbie with a damsel. She made us a long
visit, and told us all about Master Colin's nursery days. Only I am
afraid we did not understand half."
"Good old body," said the Colonel, in tones almost as national as
Tibbie's own. "She was nursery girl when I was the spoilt child of the
house, and hers was the most homelike face that met me. I wish she may
be happy here. And you are well, Ermine?"
"Very well, those drives are so pleasant, and Lady Temple so kind! It is
wonderful to think how many unlooked-for delights have come to us; how
good every one is;" and her eyes shone with happy tears as she looked
up at him, and felt that he was as much her own as ever. "And you have
brought your brother," she said; "you have been too useful to him to be
spared. Is he come to look after you or to be looked after!"
"A little of both I fancy," said the Colonel, "but I suspect he is
giving me up as a bad job. Ermine, there are ominous revivifications
going on at home, and he has got himself rigged out in London, and had
his hair cut, so that he looks ten years younger."