hope you will not be bored, my boy, but I am thinking of bringing
that wretched Leam Dundas here for a few days. I don't like a girl
of her age and character to be left for a full month alone. It is
not right, for who knows what she may not do? If she ran away on the
wedding-day, she may run away again, and then where would we all be?
I cannot think what her father was about to leave her unprotected like
this. So I shall just take and bring her here; and if you are bored
with her, you must make the best of it."

Mrs. Corfield and Alick were sitting in the "work-room" on the morning
of the fifth day after the marriage, when the thought struck the
little woman of the propriety of Leam's visit to them for the month of
her father's absence. She did not see her son's face when she spoke,
being busy with her wood-carving. If she had, she would not have
thought that the presence of Leam Dundas would bore or annoy him. The
clumsy features gladdened into smiles, the dull eye brightened, the
dim complexion flushed: if ever a face expressed supreme delight,
Alick's did then; and it expressed what he felt, for, as we know, the
one love of his boyish life was this girl-queen of his fancy. Not that
he was in love with her in the ordinary sense of being in love. He
was too reverent and she too young for vulgar passion or commonplace
sentiment. She was something precious to his imagination, not his
senses, like a child-queen to her courtier, a high-born lady to her
page. He bore with her girlish temper, her girlish insolence of pride,
her ignorant opposition, with the humility of strength bending its
neck to weakness--the devotion and unselfish sweetness characteristic
of him in other of his relations than those with Leam. Judge, then, if
he was likely to be bored, as his mother feared, or if this project of
a closer domestication with her was not rather a "bit of blue" in
his sky which made these early autumn days gladder than the gladdest
summer-time.

To will and to do were synonymous with Mrs. Corfield: her motto was
_velle est agere_; and a resolve once taken was like iron at white
heat, struck into the shape of deed on the instant. Darting up from
her chair, birdlike and angular, she put away her work. "Order the
trap," she said briskly, "and come with me. We will go at once, before
that poor creature has had time to do anything, wild, or silly."

"I do not think she would do anything wild or silly, mother," said
Alick in a de