The Clever Woman of the Family [248]
for her being awake to larger interests, and doing common things better for being the Clever Woman of the family. Where is she? I don't see her now." Where is she? was asked by more than one of the party, but the next to see her was Alick, who found her standing at the window of her own room, with her long-robed, two-months' old baby in her arms. "Tired?" he asked. "No; I only sent down nurse to drink tea with the other grandees. What a delightful day it has been! I never hoped that such good fruit would rise out of my unhappy blunders." "The blunders that brought so much good to me." "Ah! the old places bring them back again. I have been recollecting how it used to seem to me the depth of my fall that you were marrying me out of pure pity, without my having the spirit to resent or prevent it, and now I just like to think how kind and noble it was in you." "I am glad to hear it! I thought I was so foolishly in love, that I was very glad of any excuse for pressing it on." "Are the people dispersing? Where is your uncle?" "He went home with the Colonel and his wife; he has quite lost his heart to Ermine." "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." "It was a rusty implement, and you tried weight instead of edge. Now it is infinitely brighter." "But, Alick," she said, leaving the thought of herself for that of her child, "I believe you may be right about Una, for," she added in low voice, "she is like the most practically clever person I ever saw." "True," he answered gravely, "I see it every day, in every saucy gesture