"And Una--did you leave her with Grace?"
"No, she trotted down hand in hand with his little lordship: promising
to lead her uncle back."
"My dear Alick, you don't mean that you trust to that?"
"Why, hardly implicitly."
"Is that the way you say so? They may be both over the cliffs. If you
will just stay in the room with baby, I will go down and fetch them up."
Alick very obediently held out his arms for his son, but when Rachel
proceeded to take up her hat, he added, "You have run miles enough
to-day. I am going down as soon as my uncle has had time to pay his
visit in peace, without being hunted."
"Does he know that?"
"The Colonel does, which comes to the same thing. Is not this boy just
of the age that little Keith was when you gave him up?"
"Yes; and is it not delightful to see how much larger and heavier he
is!"
"Hardly, considering your objections to fine children."
"Oh, that was only to coarse, over-grown ones. Una is really quite as
tall as little Keith, and much more active. You saw he could not play at
the game at all, and she was all life and enjoyment, with no notion of
shyness."
"It does not enter into her composition."
"And she speaks much plainer. I never miss a word she says, and I don't
understand Keith a bit, though he tells such long stories."
"How backward!"
"Then she knows all her letters by sight--almost all, and Ermine can
never get him to tell b from d; and you know how she can repeat so many
little verses, while he could not even say, 'Thank you, pretty cow,'
this morning, when I wanted to hear him."
"Vast interval!"
"It is only eight months; but then Una is such a bright, forward child."
"Highly-developed precocity!"
"Now, Alick, what am I about? Why are you agreeing with me?"
"I am between the horns of a dilemma. Either our young chieftain must be
a dunce, or we are rearing the Clever Woman of the family."
"I hope not!" exclaimed Rachel.
"Indeed? I would not grudge her a superior implement, even if I had
sometimes cut my own fingers."
"But, Alick, I really do not think I ever was such a Clever Woman."
"I never thought you one," he quietly returned.
She smiled. This faculty had much changed her countenance. "I see," she
said, thoughtfully, "I had a few intellectual tastes, and liked to think
and read, which was supposed to be cleverness; and my wilfulness made me
fancy myself superior in force of character, in a way I could never have
imagined if I had lived more in the world. Contact with really clever
people has shown me that I am slow and unready."