CHAPTER XIV

PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE

THE autumn holidays unwound themselves slowly at Binkie, and Haco did not enjoy them in the least. Sandy was away all the time. Tibbie mysteriously disappeared; and it was only after indefinite trouble that Haco found out from the housekeeper that she had been sent to Edinburgh to learn dressmaking.

'She is a giddy girl,' said the housekeeper, confidentially, 'who has suddenly turned out quite good-looking on her mother's hands, and who gives

herself airs accordingly. It's a sad misfortune for a plain girl to become attractive all of a sudden. It turns their heads, and they think themselves ever so much more valuable than they are. Now, for my part, I wouldn't give a plain girl for a pretty girl, Mr Haco.'

'Because they are worth so much more. They can do so many things that the pretty ones can't.' 'Well, I suppose they must. We don't ask the pretty ones to do a great deal. We only want them to send on second, third, fourth, and fifth editions of themselves to posterity, to keep the world smiling.'

'Ah, sir, you don't know what you are talking about. It's them that gives all the trouble-that makes all the mischief. If we had one or two generations of quite ugly women, Mr Haco, the world would be perfect.'

'You think ugliness is morality?'

'Well, I think it's the angel with the flaming

sword which watches over the Seventh Command

ment,'

'You do?'

'Yes.'

'Then you take a meaner view of the world than I do. Tell Isaac to tell little Waters to put a dish of peaches in the arbour near the west parapet. I'm going to read there.'

Haco meditated much upon the sending away of Tibbie Baxter to Edinburgh. He agreed with the housekeeper that she had quite suddenly turned out to be pretty, and he had come to that time of life when he thought not to be in love was high treason to his nature. He lay in his arbour with his dish of peaches and his book, and looked upon the palpitating Firth and its driving sea-birds, and heard its low monotone of breaking waves, and assured himself, that, certainly, he had a right to be in love. With whom? With Lady Mary or

Tibbie? He knew he was in love, but he could not definitely say with which. Perhaps he would have been right if he had said with both; but then that would have been too much of a good thing. He looked out on the Firth, and told himself that he had a grand passion for Lady Mary, and a simple, unaffected love for Tibbie. He loved Tibbie as he might a pony, or a doe, or a caged canary; Lady Mary as a benign goddess who condescended to be friendly with him, to interest herself in his behalf, and to warn him of his faults. Yet at that point he felt there. was a difference-that his love in the one case lapsed into veneration, while in the other it glowed into a familiar fire; where he could lift Lady Mary's fingers to his lips he could take Tibbie to his heart. There was a difference. He did not know what to make of it; but from starting with the presumption that he had a grand passion for Lady Mary, he came to the conclusion

that he had a deep respect for her and the deeper emotion for Tibbie. After all, was there not something more profoundly romantic in loving a pretty peasant girl than in giving one's heart to the sister of an earl? There was no self-seeking, no alloy of selfishness, no pride of the world, in loving Tibbie. It was emotion pure and simple-the clear wellspring of affection. Besides, Tibbie never reproached him; she never pointed out the way in which he ought to go. She never said what he must do to reach perfection. She was content to take him as he was a dreaming student, without aim and object. On the whole, looking at the matter from the point of view of his arbour, and the moaning sea and the spectacle of the city beyond, he concluded that it was Tibbie who had his heart, and Lady Mary who had his understanding. He felt sure it was, for he missed the girl as he went out among the trees and looked up and down the fields, and heard nothing but the rattle of a stone