“Oh, why should we play at hide-and-seek, when I am dying for your sympathy, and you know very well whom I mean? Who could I mean but---- And oh, dear Mrs Ogilvy, do wish me joy, and say you think I have done well----”
“Oh,” cried the lady, holding up her hands, “don’t crush me with your minister! I think it’s pretty. I have no objections to it: but still you do call him Mr Logan when you speak to him. Poor man! he has been so lonely ever since his poor wife died. And I--I have been very lonely too. Can any one ever take the same place as a wife or a husband? We are two lonely people----”
“Not him,” said Mrs Ogilvy; “I can say nothing for you. Very good company he has had, better than most of the wives I see. His own daughter just the best and the kindest--and that has kept his house in such order--as it will take any strange woman no little trouble to do.”
“Oh, don’t think I shall attempt that,” said the visitor. “I have promised to be his wife, but not to be his drudge. Poor Susan has been his drudge. Not much wonder, therefore, that she could not be much of a companion to him. One can’t, my dear Mrs Ogilvy, be busy with a set of children, and teaching the a b c, all day, and then be lively and amusing to a man when he comes in tired at night.”
“I have nothing to say to it one way or another,” said Mrs Ogilvy. “I wish you may never rue it, neither him nor you, and that is just all that will come to my lips. If she is a lively companion or not, I cannot say, but my poor Susie has been a mother to these bairns; and what he will do with the little ones turned out of the house, and Susie turned out of his house----”
“You are so prejudiced! The little girls will be far better at school--and Susie is going to marry, which she should have done ten years ago. Her father has no right to keep a girl from making a happy marriage and securing the man of her heart.”
“And where is she to get,” said Mrs Ogilvy, with a slight choke in her throat, “what you call the man of her heart?”
“Oh, my dear lady, you that have known Susie all through, how can you ask? He proposed to her when she was twenty, and I believe he has asked her every year since----”
“So he has told you that old story; but he had not the courage, knowing a little more than you do, to speak to me of the man of her heart. Oh no, he had not the boldness to do that! And is Susie aware of the happiness you are preparing for her, her father and you?” the old lady said, grimly.