It was a Lover and His LassOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
It was a Lover and His Lass
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Scotland -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
He went on to the river-side with a little shrug of his shoulders. And
there was Adam, drenched, but glowing, pulling out trout after trout,
too busy to talk; and lower down the stream, in the middle of it, amid
the rush of broken water, where the river swirled round the rock, young
Stormont, almost up to his middle, in great fishing-boots, with sluices
of water flowing from his glazed sou'-wester.
"Jolly day!" Stormont cried through the rain.
"Grand for the trout," said Adam.
Lewis stood on the bank under the umbrella and shrugged his shoulders.
"I wish you joy of it," he said. His feet were growing wet, the
rain, though there was no wind, came in his face with something
like a special malice. He thought there was something savage in the
gratification of the two fishers. After he had watched them for a time,
he asked Adam for some of the trout in his basket, and went home,
carrying, with no great delight in the office, two noble trout tied
together with a string. These were cold and slimy, but he overcame
his repugnance. Janet saw him return, with his wet feet and the fish
hanging from his hand, with a mixture of amusement and dissatisfaction.
"Will they be for your lunch?" she said, with a contemptuous thought
of the fondness for eating with which Scotland always credits the
Englishman.
"Oh, no," Lewis cried, with horror; "do you think I would carry these
things for myself? Put them in a basket; I will take them to the
Castle, where," he added, with a little innocent pleasure in making the
announcement, "I am going this afternoon."
Janet looked at him with a certain contemptuous disappointment. She
thought he was going to carry the fish as a proof of his own skill and
prowess.
"I'll maybe no find a basket. What ails ye at them as they are?" she
said, with lowering brows: which our young man did not understand at
all, for it is needless to say that such an idea never crossed his
ingenuous mind.
He went up-stairs a little surprised that not even now, when he had
proved his manhood by wetting his boots (which he hastened to change),
did he please Mrs. Janet, as he called her, but without the slightest
clue to her suspicions. And after he had got into dry apparel, and
eaten his luncheon, Lewis sallied forth once more, much pleased to be
able to say that he was going to the Castle, where, indeed, the sound
of the bell at the door stirred and excited the whole household, which
had no hope of anything so refreshing as a visitor.
Miss Margaret was seated above-stairs with Lilias in a room devoted to
what was called her studies, and generally known by the title of the
book-room, though there were but few books in it. Lilias jumped up and
rushed to the window in the very midst of the chapter of constitutional
history which she was reading with her self-denying elder sister.
"There is no carriage," she said; "it will be somebody from the
village."
"Never mind who it is," said Miss Margaret; "we must finish our
chapter."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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