Kirsteen could not but break out into a laugh again, notwithstanding her compunction, at the dressmaker’s high yet mild pretension; but she listened with great interest while Mary stood and gave all her thoughts to the serious subject of the skirt and how it would hang. “I just pay no attention to what she’s saying, but I would like my gown to hang as well as any there, and you must take trouble for that,” was Mary’s report afterwards when the gown was found to be perfect. And what with these differing motives and experiences the workroom was the opening of new interests in Drumcarro, as important as even the ball at the Castle. The excitement and continued interest made the greatest improvement in Mrs. Douglas’s health, who came and sat in Miss Macnab’s room and gave a hundred directions which the dressmaker received blandly but paid no attention to. Marg’ret herself was stirred by the presence of the artist. She not only excelled herself in the scones she made for Miss Macnab’s tea, but she would come in the afternoon when she was not “throng” and stand with her hands upon each side of her ample waist and admire the work and add no insignificant part to the conversation, discoursing of her own sister, Miss Jean Brown, that was in a very large way of business in London, having gone there as a lady’s maid twenty years before. The well-born Miss Macnab allowed with a condescending wave of her hand that many began in that way. “But my opinion is that it wants good blood in your veins and a leddy’s breeding before you’ll ever make a gown that will set off a leddy,” she said to the little circle, but only, not to hurt her feelings, after Marg’ret was gone.
While these proceedings were occupying all his family, Drumcarro himself proceeded with the practical energy which hitherto had only been exercised on behalf of his sons to arrange for his daughters’ presentation to the world. More exciting to the county than a first drawing-room of the most splendid season was the ball at the Castle which was by far the finest thing that many of the Argyllshire ladies of those days ever saw. Even among those who like the family of Drumcarro owned no clan allegiance to the Duke, the only way of approaching the _beau monde_, the great world which included London and the court as well as the Highlands was by his means. The Duke in his own country was scarcely second to the far off and unknown King whose throne was shrouded in such clouds of dismay and trouble, and the Duchess was in all but name a far more splendid reality than the old and peevish majesty, without beauty or prestige, who sat in sullen misery at Windsor. To go to London, or even to Edinburgh, to the Lord High Commissioner’s receptions at Holyrood, was a daring enterprise that nobody dreamed of; but to go to the Castle was the seal of good blood and breeding. When he had got this notion into his head Drumcarro was as determined upon it as the fondest father could have been. The girls were of no consequence, but his daughters had their rights with the best, and he would not have the family let down even in their insignificant persons; not to speak of the powerful suggestion of relieving himself from further responsibility by putting them each in the way of finding “a man.”