It was the last week in November when the doctor came himself to take Phemy home to her father. The day was bright and blue, with a thin carpet of snow on the ground, beneath which the roads were in good condition. While she was getting ready, old David went out and talked to the doctor who would not go in, his wrinkled face full of light, and his heart glad with the same gladness as Kirsty’s.

 

Mrs. Barclay and Kirsty busied themselves about Phemy, who was as playful and teasing as a pet kitten while they dressed her, but Steenie kept in the darkest corner, watching everything, but offering no unneeded help. Without once looking or asking for him, never missing him in fact, Phemy climbed, with David’s aid, into the gig beside the doctor, at once began talking to him, and never turned her head as they drove away. The moment he heard the sound of the horse’s hoofs¹, Steenie came quietly from the gloom and went out of the back-door, thinking no eye was upon him. But his sister’s heart was never off him, and her eyes were oftener on him than he knew.

 

Of late he had begun again to go to the hill at night, and Kirsty feared his old trouble might be returning. Glad as she was to serve Phemy, and the father through the daughter, she was far from regretting her departure, for now she would have leisure for Steenie and her books, and now the family would gather itself once more into the perfect sphere to which drop and ocean alike desires to shape itself!

 

‘I thoucht ye wud be efter me!’ cried Steenie, as she opened the door of his burrow², within an hour of his leaving the house.

 

Now Kirsty had expected to find him full of grief because of Phemy’s going, especially as the heartless girl, for such Steenie’s sister could not help thinking her, never said good-bye to her most loving slave. And she did certainly descry³ on his countenance⁴ traces of emotion, and in his eyes the lingering trouble as of a storm all but overblown. There was however in his face the light as of a far sunk aurora⁵, the outmost rim

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