Do not greet so dreadfully; surely you are not happy, Kate!" But you are happy, Flora;" said Kate, weeping; "and how is "and how is my good highland father, and mother, and Daniel? Ah! I think, Flora, your clothes have the very smell of the sea-shore, and of the bark of the nets, and of the heather hills of Argyleshire. Alas! the happy days you remind me of, Flora." "And so, Kate, you are not so very happy, after all," said Flora, looking incredulously in her face, "and you are so thin, and pale, and your eyes are so red: and yet you have such a grand house, Kate! Tell me if you are really not happy?" "I have no house, Flora," said Kate, after a little, "nor, I may say, no husband. They are both completely ruled by his two vixen sisters, who kept house for him before he married me, and still have the entire ascendancy over him. My husband, too, is not naturally good tempered; yet he once loved me, and I might enjoy some little happiness in this new life, if he had the feeling or the spirit to treat me as his wife, and free himself and the house from the dominion of his sisters, especially the eldest. But I believe he is rather disappointed in his ambitious career, and in the hopes he entertained of matches for his sisters, and is somewhat sour and unhappy; and I have to bear it all, for he is afraid of these women; and I, the youngest in the family, and the only one who has a chance of being good-tempered, am, on account of my low origin, forced to bear the spleen of all in this unhappy house." "But, Kate, surely your husband would not behave so bad, as to cast up to you that your father was a fisherman, when he took you from the bonny sea-side himself, and when he thought himself once so happy to get you?" "Alas! he does indeed!-too often-too often; when he is crossed abroad, and when his sisters set him on, and that is very mean of him; and it so humbles me, Flora, when I am sitting at his table, that I cannot lift my head; and I am so sad, and so heart-broken among them all?" "Bless me! and can people be really so miserable," said Flora, simply, "who have plenty of money, and silk dresses to wear every day they rise?" "It is little you know, my happy Flora, of artificial life here in London," said Kate, mournfully. "As for dress, I cannot even order one but as my sister-in-law chooses; and as for happiness, I have left it behind me on the beautiful banks of the Clyde. Oh, that I was there again!" "Poor little Kate!" said Flora, wistfully looking again in her sister's face; "and is that the end of all your grand marriage, that has set a' the lasses crazy, from the Fairly Roads to Gourock Point? I think I'll gang back and marry Bryce Cameron after a'. "Is Allan Cameron married yet?" said Kate, sadly. "When did you see blithe and bonnie Allan Cameron? Alas! the day!" 66 He gave me this brooch to return to you, Kate," said Flora, taking the brooch out of her bosom. "I wish he had not given it to me for you, for you're vex'd enough already.” "Ah! well you may say I am vex'd enough," said she, weeping and contemplating the brooch. "Tell Allan Cameron, that I am sensible I did not use him well, that my vain heart was lifted up; but I have suffered for it-many a sad and sleepless night I have lain in my bed, and thought of the delightful days I spent near my father's happy cottage in Scotland, and about you, and about Allan. Alas! just tell him not to think more of me, for I am a sad and sorry married woman, out of my own sphere, and afraid to speak to my own people, panting my heart out, and dying by inches, like the pretty silver fish that floundered on the hard stones, after my father had taken them out of their own clear water.' ! "God help you, Kate!" said Flora, rising; "you will break my heart with grief about you. Let me out of this miserable house! Let me leave you and all your grandeur, since I cannot help you; and I will pray for you, my poor Kate, every night at my bed-side, when I get back to the bonnie shore of Argyleshire, Sad was the parting of the two weeping sisters, and many a kiss of fraternal affection embittered, yet sweetened, the hour: and anxious was Flora M'Leod to turn her back upon the great city of London, and to journey northwards to her own home in Scotland. It was a little before sundown, on a Saturday evening shortly after this, that a buzz of steam, let off at the Mid Quay of Greenock, indicated that a steam-boat had come in; and it proved to be from the fair seaport of Liverpool, having on board Flora M'Leod, just down from London. The boat, as it passed, had been watched by the cottagers where she lived up the Firth; and several of them, their day's work being over, set out towards the Clough, to see if there was any chance of meeting Flora. Many were the congratulations, and more the inquiries, when they met Flora, lumbering homewards with her bundle and her umbrella, weary, and looking anxiously out for her own sweet cottage by Clyde side. “Ah, Flora! is this you," cried the whole at once; "and are you really here again?-and how is your sister, and all the other great people in London? and, indeed, it is very good of you not to look the least proud, after coming from such a grand place!" With such congratulations was Flora welcomed again among the light-hearted fisher people in the west of Scotland. But it was observed that her tone was now quite altered, and her own humble contentment had completely returned. In short, to bring our story to a close, she was shortly after married to Bryce Cameron, and various other marriages soon followed; for she gave such an account of what she had seen with her eyes, that a complete revolution took place in the sentiments of the whole young people of the neighbourhood. It was observed, in the hamlet, that the unhappy Mrs Pounteney was never named after this, by any but with a melancholy shake of the head; the ambition of the girls to get gentlemen, seemed quite extinguished; and Flora, in time, began to nurse children of her own in humble and pious contentment. She received manny letters after this from London, over which she often wept to herself, while she prayed in private that poor Mrs Pounteney might yet experience happier days; but she was never heard to utter one vaunting word more concerning "my sister Kate." WRITTEN BENEATH A PICTURE. DEAR object of defeated care! Though now of Love and thee bereft, Thine image and my tears are left. |