Olive | Page 3

earnest by real feeling.
"Eh, what?" said the nurse.
"I am sorry to say that the child is deformed--slightly so--very slightly I hope--but most certainly deformed. Hump-backed."
At this terrible sentence Elspie sank back in her chair. Then she started up, clasping the child convulsively, and faced the doctor.
[Illustration: Page 5, How daur ye speak so]
"Ye lee, ye ugly creeping Englisher! How daur ye speak so of ane o' the Rothesays,--frae the blude o' whilk cam the tallest men an' the bonniest leddies--ne'er a cripple amang them a ---- How daur ye say that my master's bairn will be a------. Wae's me! I canna speak the word."
"My poor woman!" mildly said the doctor, "I am really concerned."
"Haud your tongue, ye fule!" muttered Elspie, while she again laid the child on her lap, and examined it earnestly for herself. The result confirmed all. She wrung her hands, and rocked to and fro, moaning aloud.
"Ochone, the wearie day! O my dear master, my bairn, that I nursed on my knee! how will ye come back an' see your first-born, the last o' the Rothesays, a puir bit crippled lassie!"
A faint call from the inner room startled both doctor and nurse.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed the former. "We must think of the mother. Stay--I'll go. She does not, and she must not, know of this. What a blessing that I have already told her the child was a fine and perfect child. Poor thing, poor thing!" he added passionately, as he hurried to his patient leaving Elspie hushed into silence, still mournfully gazing on her charge.
It would have been curious to mark the changes in the nurse's face during that brief interval. At first it wore a look almost of repugnance as she regarded the unconscious child, and then that very unconsciousness seemed to awaken her womanly compassion. "Puir hapless wean, ye little ken what ye're coming to! Lack o' kinsman's love, and lack o' siller, and lack o' beauty. God forgie me--but why did He send ye into the waefu' warld at a'?"
It was a question, the nature of which has perplexed theologians, philosophers, and metaphysicians, in every age, and will perplex them all to the end of time. No wonder, therefore, that it could not be solved by the poor simple Scotswoman. But as she stood hushing the child to her breast, and looking vacantly out of the window at the far mountains which grew golden in the sunset, she was unconsciously soothed by the scene, and settled the matter in a way which wiser heads might often do with advantage.
"Aweel! He kens best. He made the warld and a' that's in't; and maybe He will gie unto this puir wee thing a meek spirit to bear ill-luck. Ane must wark, anither suffer. As the minister says, It'll a' come richt at last."
Still the babe slept on, the sun sank, and night fell upon the earth. And so the morning and evening made the first day of the new existence, which was about to be developed, through all the various phases which compose that strange and touching mystery--a woman's life.
CHAPTER II.
There is not a more hackneyed subject for poetic enthusiasm than that sight--perhaps the loveliest in nature--a young mother with her first-born child. And perhaps because it is so lovely, and is ever renewed in its beauty, the world never tires of dwelling thereupon.
Any poet, painter, or sculptor, would certainly have raved about Mrs. Rothesay, had he seen her in the days of convalescence, sitting at the window with her baby on her knee. She furnished that rare sight--and one that is becoming rarer as the world grows older--an exquisitely beautiful woman. Would there were more of such!--that the idea of physical beauty might pass into the heart through the eyes, and bring with it the ideal of the soul's perfection, which our senses can only thus receive. So great is this influence--so unconsciously do we associate the type of spiritual with material beauty, that perhaps the world might have been purer and better if its onward progress in what it calls civilisation had not so nearly destroyed the fair mould of symmetry and loveliness which tradition celebrates.
It would have done any one's heart good only to look at Sybilla Rothesay. She was a creature to watch from a distance, and then to go away and dream of, wondering whether she were a woman or a spirit. As for describing her, it is almost impossible--but let us try.
She was very small in stature and proportions--quite a little fairy. Her cheek had the soft peachy hue of girlhood; nay, of very childhood. You would never have thought her a mother. She lay back, half-buried in the great armchair; and then, suddenly springing up from amidst the cloud of white muslins and laces that enveloped her, she showed