Bildungsromans; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Scotland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"Another lost lamb," groaned Trewhella. "Another soul in the pit. Oh, I
do pray wi' all my heart that my poor lill son may find favor in the
Lord's eyes and become a child of grace to preach the Word and confound
the Gentiles."
"Did ever a man hark to such nonsense in his life?" exclaimed Granfa.
"I shouldn't argue with him in one of his moods," advised Jenny, looking
at her husband coldly and distastefully.
"Oh, dear Lord, give me strength to heal the blindness of my family and
make my poor lill son a sword in the side of unbelievers."
Then presently the gloom would pass; he would go out silently to the
fields, and after a day's work come back in a fever of earthly desires
to his wife.
There were shadows in Bochyn, for all the sunlight and birdsong and
sweetpeas blossom.
Chapter XLIII: _Bow Bells_
Summer went by very quickly in the deserted orchard, and in fine
September weather young Frank's first birthday was celebrated with much
goodwill by everybody. Zachary, with the successful carrying of a rich
harvest, ceased to brood so much on the failure of humanity. He became
his own diligent self, amassing grain and gold and zealously expurgating
for reproduction in bleak chapels that winter a volume of sermons by an
Anglican bishop. Young Frank began to show distinct similarities of
feature to Jenny, similarities that not even the most critical observer
could demolish. He showed, too, some of her individuality, had a temper
and will of his own, and seemed like his mother born to inherit life's
intenser emotions. Jenny was not yet inclined to sink herself in him, to
transfer to the boy her own activity of sensation. Mrs. Raeburn was
thirty-three when Jenny was born: young Frank arrived when his mother
was ten years younger than that. It was not expected that she should
feel the gates of youth were closed against her. Moreover, Jenny, with
all the fullness of her experience, was strangely young on the eve of
her twenty-fourth birthday, still seeming, indeed, no more than eighteen
or nineteen. There was a divine youthfulness about her which was proof
against the Furies, and, since the diverting absurdities of young Frank,
laughter had come back. Those deep eyes danced again for one who from
altitudes of baby ecstasies would gloriously respond. May was another
triumph for affection. There was joy in regarding that little sister,
once wan with Islington airs, now happy and healthy and almost as
rose-pink as Jenny herself. How pleased her mother would have been, and,
in retrospect, how skeptical must she have felt of Jenny's ability to
keep that promise always to look after May.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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