But Jenny’s scruples at last yielded, and Jenny came forth from her
chamber glorious in a blue-and-yellow gown, printed in great stripes and
figures, and made after an antediluvian fashion, which utterly shocked
and horrified the pretty Maria, Miss Annie Laurie’s favourite maid. Nor
was Miss Annie Laurie herself less disconcerted, when honest Jenny, the
high shoulder largely developed by her tight-fitting gown, and carrying
a cake-basket in her brown hands, made her appearance in the
partially-filled drawing-room, threading her way leisurely through the
guests, and examining, with keen glances and much attention, the faces
of the masculine portion of them. Miss Annie made a pause in her own
lively and juvenile talk, to watch the strange figure and the keen
inquiring face, over which a shade of bewilderment gradually crept. But
Miss Annie no longer thought it amusing, when Jenny made an abrupt
pause before her young mistress, then shily endeavouring to make
acquaintance with some very fine young ladies, daughters of Miss Annie’s
loftiest and most aristocratic friends, and said in a startling whisper,
which all the room could hear, “Miss Menie! ye might tell folk which is
him, if he’s here; but I canna see a creature that’s like Johnnie
Lithgow o’ Kirklands, nor ony belanging to him, in the haill room.”
Miss Annie Laurie, much horrified, rose from her seat somewhat hastily;
but at the same moment up sprang by her side the guest to whom her most
particular attentions had been devoted--“And Burnside Jenny has
forgotten me!”
Burnside Jenny, quite forgetful of “all the folk,” turned round upon him
in an instant. Not quite Johnnie Lithgow, the merriest mischief-doer in
Kirklands parish, but a face that prompted recollections of his without
dispute--blue eyes, dancing and running over with the light of a happy
spirit--and a wisp of close curls, not many shades darker in colour than
those of the “white-headed laddie,” whose merry tricks Jenny had not
forgotten. “Eh, man! is this you?” said Jenny, with a sigh of
satisfaction. “I aye likit the callant for a’ his mischief, and it’s
just the same blithe face after a’.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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