Other causes were also in operation destined to frustrate the
long-forecasting prudence of her father. Mr. and Mrs. Eadie, on their
arrival at Edinburgh, took up their abode with her relation Mr. Frazer,
the intending purchaser of Glengael; and they had not been many days
in his house, till they came to the determination to adopt Ellen, his
eldest daughter, who was then about the age of James. Accordingly,
after having promoted the object of their journey, when they returned
to the manse of Camrachle, they were allowed to take Ellen with them;
and the intimacy which arose among the children in the progress of time
ripened into love between her and James. For although his uncle, in the
prosecution of his own purpose, often invited the boy to spend several
days together with his cousin at Kittlestonheugh, and did everything
in his power during those visits to inspire the children with a mutual
affection, their distaste for each other seemed only to increase.
Robina was sly and demure, observant, quiet, and spiteful. Ellen, on
the contrary, was full of buoyancy and glee, playful and generous,
qualities which assimilated much more with the dispositions of James
than those of his cousin, so that, long before her beauty had awakened
passion, she was to him a more interesting and delightful companion.
The amusements, also, at Camrachle, were more propitious to the growth
of affection than those at Kittlestonheugh, where every thing was
methodized into system, and where, if the expression may be allowed,
the genius of design and purpose controlled and repressed nature. The
lawn was preserved in a state of neatness too trim for the gambols of
childhood; and the walks were too winding for the straight-forward
impulses of its freedom and joy. At Camrachle the fields were open, and
their expanse unbounded. The sun, James often thought, shone brighter
there than at Kittlestonheugh; the birds sang sweeter in the wild
broom than in his uncle’s shrubbery, and the moonlight glittered like
gladness in the burns; but on the wide water of the Clyde it was always
dull and silent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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