“But the song says she made a tender wife,” I objected.
“She couldn’t help herself. She made the best of it. I dare say he wasn’t a bad sort of a fellow, but he was no gentleman.”
“Turkey!” I exclaimed. “He was a prince!”
“I don’t know that. I’ve read of a good many princes who did things I should be ashamed to do.”
“But you’re not a prince, Turkey,” I returned, in the low endeavour to bolster up the wrong with my silly logic.
“No. Therefore if I were to do what was rude and dishonest, people would say: ‘What could you expect of a ploughboy?’ A prince ought to be just so much better bred than a ploughboy. I would scorn to do what that prince did. What’s wrong in a ploughboy can’t be right in a prince, Ranald. Or else right is only right sometimes; so that right may be wrong and wrong may be right, which is as much as to say there is no right and wrong; and if there’s no right and wrong, the world’s an awful mess, and there can’t be any God, for a God would never have made it like that.”
“Well, Turkey, you know best. I can’t help thinking the prince was not so much to blame, though.”
“Perhaps he would rather have had the misery and all together than none of it.”
“That’s for him to settle. But he must have seen he was wrong, before he had done wandering by the sea like that.”
“Well now, Turkey, what would you have done yourself, suppose the beautifulest of them all had laid her comb down within an inch of where you were standing--and never saw you, you know?”
Turkey thought for a moment before answering.
“I’m supposing you fell in love with her at first sight, you know,” I added.
“Well, I’m sure I should not have kept the comb, even if I had taken it just to get a chance of speaking to her. And I can’t help fancying if he had behaved like a gentleman, and let her go without touching her the first time, she might have come again; and if he had married her at last of her own free will, she would not have run away from him, let the sea have kept calling her ever so much.”
The next evening, I looked for Elsie as usual, but did not see her. How blank and dull the schoolroom seemed! Still she might arrive any moment. But she did not come. I went through my duties wearily, hoping ever for the hour of release. I could see well enough that Turkey was anxious too. The moment school was over, we hurried away, almost without a word, to the cottage. There we found her weeping. Her grandmother had died suddenly. She clung to Turkey, and seemed almost to forget my presence. But I thought nothing of that. Had the case been mine, I too should have clung to Turkey from faith in his help and superior wisdom.