Various

“ I never forgot that walk! It made a very deep impression on my childish mind, not easily effaced in the long after-years. If people only knew what the sympathy of a "real, grown-up friend" is to a shy child, what courage it gives to the trembling little heart! How few children would be set down as shy and stupid, and be thoroughly misunderstood (as some are now) , if only there were more like Mr. Dodgson, who, though one of the cleverest of men, could yet stoop to win the love and confidence and enter into the joys and sorrows of his numerous child friends! ”

“ Arrived at his rooms, Harold did the honours; not without fears lest May should miss the luxuries of her home. But she enjoyed the change of surroundings with all the zest of a schoolgirl, and Doris, being made much of, was as good as gold. Harold himself had not spent such a delightful hour since he came to Beachbourne, but his hour of bliss was all too short; for soon a summons came from a patient, and, though it was only a greengrocer in the next street, patients were too precious to be slighted. So he departed, begging Mrs. Burnside to remain with Lulu until his return. ”

“ Lord Glengall was no ardent wooer. His manner was more the manner of a father than of a lover, and his moments of greatest contentment were only marked by a deeper quiet. While Pam and he were much together, their talk, unlike the talk of young lovers, was of everything but themselves. Lord Glengall had plans for the disposal of the great wealth he had brought from the gold-fields; but they were plans in which personal ambition had no share.
Mr. Graydon was still languid after his illness, and during those summer days a great quietness seemed to have descended upon Carrickmoyle. ”

“ But I've given Mary what will start her in housekeeping. You are going to marry a rich man."
"You are good to think of Mary."
"It is easier to do now than if I had lived longer. Between my legacy and what Glengall will do she need not want."
"She deserves to be happy."
"But what is the matter with you, Pam? Why aren't you happy?"
"I am happy."
"With that face, child! There was a woman once—perhaps you know her—whose lover went away and never came back. Perhaps he was dead; perhaps he had forgotten. You look as if your lover had never come back."
Pamela covered her face with her hands. ”

“ I remember once a young ladies' school used to send roses once a week from a pretty suburb of London; they used to bring them to school in the morning from their gardens, make them at twelve into bouquets, send them up by three, and they were in East London homes by five. As I used to take the bouquets of beautiful flowers round on trays—followed, I may say, by a mob of children yelling for a flower, for old and young have a touching love for flowers in East London—I always found that I required four bouquets for each house, for each house contained at least four families. ”

“ What is that to make you give up your life, your freedom to think, to hope, to pray? It will be one long struggle, Pamela. You will be like a creature in prison, for whom the free world were paradise enough."
"I know Glengall is good," she went on. "Another girl might come to love him, in spite of his grey hairs, but not you, Pam. One sees clearer when one is going to leave all this. ”

“ May smiled with quiet bitterness. "I have no wish to see Doris speak on a platform, or go in for a man's profession; but I do feel, more and more, that it is better for women to be independent, whether they marry or not."
"Why, that's just what I always say!" [403] cried Lulu delightedly. "All women can't marry nowadays—there are not enough men to go round. Besides, what is more contemptible than to see girls sitting idle, with their hands folded, waiting for somebody to come along and marry them? No, every girl ought to be able to earn her own living, and then she's safe, whatever happens!" ”

“ He asked me, and I said 'No,' but I will go now, and will walk into Portree this very night! Beannachd leibh (good-bye) ."
He had turned away then, furiously. It had all passed as suddenly, swept up as unexpectedly as had the squall outside the Cave of Gold. Ishbel stood as if dazed, staring straight before her. A Highlander's rage is like a Highland storm; one bends before it instinctively. Ishbel did so now.
Rory did not look back. Duncan, in the doorway, saw him stride on to the road, through the little patch of oats before the door. He set his face towards the high road for Portree. ”

“ Leslie," said Lady Kitty with bent head.
"Anthony's friend? Yes, I know you liked him, but I thought it was for Anthony's sake."
"I am so sorry," Lady Kitty said again. Then she went on, with a timidity foreign to her: "Anthony is very unhappy, Auntie Janie. Can nothing be done?"
Lady Jane turned away her head.
"What do you expect me to do, Kitty?"
"He is your own son, and he loves Pamela Graydon. She loves him too. Why, it was written on her face, if only I had had eyes to see. Yet she has engaged herself to another man! ”

“ She was always an odd child, Catriona said, with ruddy tawny locks, and sloe-eyes, elfish and silent, doing queer, uncanny, unaccountable things, with moods of sadness and moods of mirth. She grew up in Skye, and would never leave it, though she had her chance to do so.
Ishbel lived with Catriona till she was nineteen, and helped her with her spinning and knitting; she also milked the cows, and worked about the house. The girl's head was full of her grandmother's teaching; she believed in the fairies, though she rarely spoke of them. ”

“ Poor foolish child! she failed to realise that if a man is too weak to stand alone, without some woman to prop him up continually, the chances are that he will bring ruin upon both. May shuddered to recall those four miserable years of ill-treatment, disgrace, and privation, which ended in the death of her husband, and left her absolutely penniless. Her father was dead, his other children were scattered, and, but for Miss Waller, she and Doris might have starved. ”

“ It was nearing evening, and shadows were creeping over the heather—the burn, amber-coloured under the sun, looked dark and sullen-brown now, and had begun its hoarse night-song, for it only sings in the dark. The deer hear and love this song as they creep down cautiously, light-footedly, turning startled graceful heads from side to side, and they pause a moment, poised with listening ear, before they bury thirsty soft noses into the cool rushing water. The deer did not mind Ishbel! ”

“ Long years before man brake the first poor spikenard vessel of worship and adoring love at the feet of the Eternal, God poured His precious gifts of bloom and scent in bewildering profusion and prodigality upon the listless sons of earth.
I have sometimes wondered whether man might not have gone on conceiving of the world as no more than so much food, and clothing, and shelter, if God had not startled him by this annual miracle of spring to ask the question, "To what purpose is this waste?" ”

“ Miss Waller had no love for children; and Doris was too well trained to defy her great-aunt. Still hugging her precious sweets, she was whisked away; whilst the spinster, producing a gilt-edged account-book, methodically entered the sums paid by her niece that morning out of a twenty-pound note. Every halfpenny was accounted for, and when May closed her purse just one solitary sixpence remained in it which she could really call her own. ”

“ Sunset came early, and tinged and stained the loch, the Cuchillans stood out sharply in their lovely serrated outline, against a background of pure gold—they were almost friendly and neighbourly, and approachable; it was in winter that they lowered and sulked in the mist, or frowned blackly from amongst the lashing swirls of rain.
Ishbel had gone to fetch fodder for the cows, and the fodder was a great pile of pale yellow bracken, which she bound together and fastened on her back. ”

“ The contemplation of a beautiful and pure work of art acts as a charm upon the mind oppressed with care and trouble. A landscape on canvas, reflecting the sunshine of the countryside, suggesting its freedom of atmosphere, its "fair quiet and sweet rest," when seen in the midst of the toil and grime of a great city, is a sedative to the jaded nerves of the busy worker ”

“ When bright-faced Lulu had returned home, brief though her visit had been, Harold missed her inexpressibly. To vary the monotony of his dreary rooms, he paid his promised call in Victoria Square, to find himself promptly relegated to the background by Miss Waller, who perfectly understood how to snub people without being unladylike. May, who made tea, hardly uttered a word; and the lion of the occasion was Mr. Lang, who expatiated on the riches of South Africa and his own importance on the Randt.
"You're nowhere unless you've got money nowadays," he confidently asserted. ”

“ How the piper, Angus Macdonald, loved a MacLeod of Dunvegen, a follower of the great MacLeod, and how this lady-love's father would have none of him, but set him some of those foolish and impossible tasks so dear to the story-teller of all ages and climes and nationalities.
One task bade him enter the Cave of Gold at midnight, on Midsummer's Night, and play "MacLeod of Dunvegen," passing through the little dancing folk, and penetrating far into the mystery of the cave's windings, where no Skye man had ever been. ”

“ But surrounding the clover-fields and the bright gardens and the sunny meadows was a band of black darkness, and those who had passed into the darkness never came back. Everybody who sang and laughed and loved in the sunshine knew that some day their turn would come to step alone into the strange country of night that girdled the land like an impenetrable curtain; and sometimes one or another would come and look sadly and tearfully on the darkness, and then turn back with bowed head, and try to forget it. ”

“ The mystery and the charm had fled; she [432] no longer dreamed on the green grass circle, no longer wondered at the night-song of the burn, no longer watched for the kelpies under the boulders in the burns or in the Rowan Pool. Belief in the fairies had faded on the night in which Rory left her. Except in the little bald, white kirk on the hill-side, Ishbel never sang. Song dies on the lips when care and sorrow lie heavy on the heart. ”

“ They had already passed many well-dressed groups of residents, but none presenting so imposing an appearance collectively as did stately Miss Waller, in heliotrope, May Burnside, in an exquisite costume of pale grey silk and chiffon, Doris, a vision of childish prettiness in white muslin, and two or three equally well-dressed men, conspicuous amongst whom was Mr. Lang. Harold's colour rose as he lifted his hat, whilst Lulu eagerly exclaimed, "Oh! who is that pretty girl in grey? She looks quite fit for the Park!" ”

“ Anyhow, if he never did, it would be better to be like that woman—a little cracked, perhaps, and always expecting her lover, till she woke up one day dying, and in her right mind—it would be better to be like her than to marry without love."
Pamela trembled, but her face was hidden.
"Tell me, Pam. You won't mind confiding in an old woman who has only a few days more to live. ”

“ Yes, the one thing they are proud to have done, the one thing they sometimes think may stand them in stead in a world where wealth and fame will be as nothing, is a thing which none could justify on commercial principles—which stands in conflict with the great aims and efforts of their lives—an action that sprang inevitably from a spendthrift love, and of which the world in which they move might well demand, "To what purpose is this waste?" ”

“ Just so soon as man found himself appealed to in the higher faculties and senses, did he begin to suspect himself above the brute; did he begin to discover beneath the form of things a gracious and bountiful Spirit, whose attitude to him found voice in these tender and winsome words of Nature's lips.
Flowers "born to blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air"—to what purpose are they? Surely, surely (as Mary's offering of sweet spikenard) they are God's approach to man, if only we would accept them as such. ”

“ Lulu opened her eyes, for she was not accustomed to pity. "I'm proud to be a working-woman, and even if I were rich like you, Mrs. Burnside, I couldn't bear to sit with my hands folded."
"Rich like me!" May echoed drearily. "I'm not rich; I owe everything I possess to my aunt."
"But she's rich, so it must be the same thing," persisted Lulu.
Just then Harold came hurrying in. "I was as quick as I could be, Mrs. Burnside," he began, manifestly pleased to find May still there. ”

“ To his delight, she instantly accepted the invitation; eager, in truth, to escape from the hated society of Mr. Lang. Harold then turned to Doris, gaily asking whether she would come too.
"Yes, I will," she answered with childish bluntness. "I like you, but I don't like Dr. Ellis—nasty man!—and I hate Mr. Lang."
"You shouldn't hate anybody, Doris," reproved May.
"But Mr. Lang calls me Little Crosspatch, and it's very rude of him to call me names, mummy."
"Bravo, Doris!" cried Lulu mischievously, as they turned to go. "Stick up for your rights—you'll be a 'New Woman' when you grow up." ”