Christie Johnstone | Page 8

was himself never guilty.
As for the prescription, that was a Delphic Oracle. Worlds could not have tempted him to deviate from a letter in it.
He waited with impatience for the yacht; and, meantime, it struck him that the first part of the prescription could be attacked at once.
It was the afternoon of the day succeeding his arrival. The Fifeshire hills, seen across the Firth from his windows, were beginning to take their charming violet tinge, a light breeze ruffled the blue water into a sparkling smile, the shore was tranquil, and the sea full of noiseless life, with the craft of all sizes gliding and dancing and courtesying on their trackless roads.
The air was tepid, pure and sweet as heaven; this bright afternoon, Nature had grudged nothing that could give fresh life and hope to such dwellers in dust and smoke and vice as were there to look awhile on her clean face and drink her honeyed breath.
This young gentleman was not insensible to the beauty of the scene. He was a little lazy by nature, and made lazier by the misfortune of wealth, but he had sensibilities; he was an artist of great natural talent; had he only been without a penny, how he would have handled the brush! And then he was a mighty sailor; if he had sailed for biscuit a few years, how he would have handled a ship!
As he was, he had the eye of a hawk for Nature's beauties, and the sea always came back to him like a friend after an absence.
This scene, then, curled round his heart a little, and he felt the good physician was wiser than the tribe that go by that name, and strive to build health on the sandy foundation of drugs.
"Saunders! do you know what Dr. Aberford means by the lower classes?"
"Perfectly, my lord."
"Are there any about here?"
"I am sorry to say they are everywhere, my lord."
"Get me some"--_(cigarette)._
Out went Saunders, with his usual graceful _empressement,_ but an internal shrug of his shoulders.
He was absent an hour and a half; he then returned with a double expression on his face--pride at his success in diving to the very bottom of society, and contempt of what he had fished up thence.
He approached his lord mysteriously, and said, _sotto voce,_ but impressively, "This is low enough, my lord." Then glided back, and ushered in, with polite disdain, two lovelier women than he had ever opened a door to in the whole course of his perfumed existence.
On their heads they wore caps of Dutch or Flemish origin, with a broad lace border, stiffened and arched over the forehead, about three inches high, leaving the brow and cheeks unencumbered.
They had cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in patterns, confined at the waist by the apron-strings, but bobtailed below the waist; short woolen petticoats, with broad vertical stripes, red and white, most vivid in color; white worsted stockings, and neat, though high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets they wore a thick spotted cotton handkerchief, about one inch of which was visible round the lower part of the throat. Of their petticoats, the outer one was kilted, or gathered up toward the front, and the second, of the same color, hung in the usual way.
Of these young women, one had an olive complexion, with the red blood mantling under it, and black hair, and glorious black eyebrows.
The other was fair, with a massive but shapely throat, as white as milk; glossy brown hair, the loose threads of which glittered like gold, and a blue eye, which, being contrasted with dark eyebrows and lashes, took the luminous effect peculiar to that rare beauty.
Their short petticoats revealed a neat ankle, and a leg with a noble swell; for Nature, when she is in earnest, builds beauty on the ideas of ancient sculptors and poets, not of modern poetasters, who, with their airy-like sylphs and their smoke-like verses, fight for want of flesh in woman and want of fact in poetry as parallel beauties.
_They are,_ my lads.--_Continuez!_
These women had a grand corporeal trait; they had never known a corset! so they were straight as javelins; they could lift their hands above their heads!--actually! Their supple persons moved as Nature intended; every gesture was ease, grace and freedom.
What with their own radiance, and the snowy cleanliness and brightness of their costume, they came like meteors into the apartment.
Lord Ipsden, rising gently from his seat, with the same quiet politeness with which he would have received two princes of the blood, said, "How do you do?" and smiled a welcome.
"Fine! hoow's yoursel?" answered the dark lass, whose name was Jean Carnie, and whose voice was not so sweet as her face.
"What'n lord are ye?" continued she; "are you a juke? I wad like fine to hae a crack