The first fortnight of Mona's stay at Borrowness was drawing to a close, and she was wellnigh prostrated with sheer physical reaction.
"It is certainly my due, after all the pleasant excitement of Norway," she thought; for she would not admit, even to herself, that the strain of settling down to these new conditions of life had taxed her nerves more than medical study and examinations had ever been able to do.
She tried hard to be brave and bright, but even Rachel's unobservant eye could not always fail to notice the contrast between her gaiety of manner and the almost woe-begone expression which her face sometimes wore in repose. Even the welcome arrival of the traveller, with samples of elastic, inter alia, only roused her for a few minutes from the lethargy into which she had fallen. If she could have spent a good deal of her time at Castle Maclean, as she had dubbed the column of rock on the beach, things would have been more bearable; but the weather continued fine, and Rachel insisted on making an interminable round of dreary afternoon calls.
Day after day they put on their "best things," and sallied forth, to sit by the hour in rose-scented parlours and exert themselves to talk about nothing. Even in this, under ordinary circumstances, Mona would have found abundant amusement, but it was not the most appropriate treatment for a profound fit of depression.
"I suppose, if I had eyes to see it, these people are all intensely interesting," she said to herself; "but, heaven help me, I find them as dull as ditch-water!"
This opinion was probably mutual, for Mona's sprightliness of manner had entirely deserted her for the moment. It was all she could do to be tolerably amiable, and to speak when she was spoken to. Some of the people they called upon remembered vaguely that her father had been a great man, and treated her with exaggerated respect in consequence; but to the majority she was simply Rachel Simpson's cousin, a person of very small account in the Borrowness world.
"We have still to go and see Auntie Bell," said Rachel at last; "but we'll wait till Mr Hogg can drive us out in his machine. He is always ready to oblige me."
"Who is Auntie Bell?"
"She's the same relation to me that I am to you; in fact, she's a far-away connection of your own. She's a plain body, taken up with her hens and her dairy,—indeed, for the matter of that, she manages the whole farm."
"A sort of Mrs Poyser?"
"I don't know her."
"Not know Mrs Poyser? Oh, you must let me read you about her. We shall finish that story in the Sunday at Home this evening, and to-morrow we will begin Mrs Poyser. It's a capital story, and I should dearly like your opinion of it."
Rachel had not much faith in the attractions of any story recommended by Mona; but, if it was about a farmer's wife, it must surely be at least comprehensible, and probably more or less interesting.
The next morning Mona was alone in the shop. Her fairy fingers had wrought a wonderful change in her surroundings, but it seemed to her now in her depression that she might better have let things alone. "Oh, reform it altogether!" she said bitterly. "What's the use of patching—what's the use?"
The shop-bell rang sharply, and Dr Dudley came in. It was a relief to see some one quite different from the people with whom her social intercourse had lain of late.
"Good morning," he said. "How are you?"
"Good morning," said Mona.
She ignored his offered hand, but she was surprised to hear herself answering unconventionally.
"I am bored," she said, "to the last limit of endurance."
He drew down his brows with a frown of sympathy.
"Are you?" he said. "What do you do for it?"
"I do believe he is going to recommend Easton's Syrup!" thought Mona.
"Ah, that's the trouble," she said. "I am not young enough to write a tragedy, so there is nothing for it but to grin and bear it."
"You ought to go out for a regular spin," he said kindly. "There's nothing like that for blowing away the cobwebs."
"I can't to-day, but to-morrow I am going for a twenty-mile walk along the coast"—"botanising," she was about to add, but she thought better of it.
"Don't overdo it," he said. "If you are not in training, twenty miles is too much," and his eye rested admiringly on her figure, as the Sahib's had done only a fortnight before. He was thinking that if his aunt's horse were less fat, and her carriage less heavy, and the world constructed on different principles generally, he would like nothing better than to take this bright young girl for a good rattle across the county.
"I think I am in pretty fair training, thank you. Can I show you anything this morning?" For Mona wished it to be understood that no young man was at liberty to drop into the shop for the sole purpose of gossip.
He sighed. "What have you got that is in the least likely to be of the smallest use to me at any future period of my life?" he felt half inclined to say; but instead, he bought some pens—which he certainly did not want—and showed no sign of going.
"My dear," called Rachel's anxious voice, "come here quick, will you? Sally has cut her finger to the bone!"
"Allow me," said Dr Dudley, taking a neat little surgical case from his pocket. "That is more in my line than yours, I think," and he hastily left the room.
"Is it indeed!" said Mona saucily to herself, drawing the counterpart of his case from her own pocket. "Set you up!"
She was about to follow him, "to hold the forceps," as she said, when the bell rang again, and two red-haired, showily-dressed girls entered the shop. They seemed surprised to see Mona there, and looked at her critically.
"Some blue ribbon," said one of them languidly, with a comical affectation of hauteur.
Mona laid the box on the counter, and they ran their eyes over the poor little store.
"No, there is nothing there that will do."
Mona bowed, and replaced the box on the shelf.
"You don't mean to say that is all you've got! Why, it is not even fresh. Some of it is half faded."
"Truly," said Mona quietly. "I suppose you will be able to get what you want elsewhere."
"I told you it was no use, Matilda, in a place like this," said the elder of the two, looking contemptuously round the shop. "Pa will be driving us in to St Rules in a day or two. There are some decent shops there."
"What is the use of that when I want it to-night? Just let me see the box again."
She took up the least impossible roll of ribbon and regarded it critically.
"You can't possibly take that, Matilda. Every shop-girl wears that shade."
Matilda nudged her sister violently, and they both strove to prevent a giggle from getting the better of their dignity. Fortunately, when they looked at Mona, she seemed to be quite unconscious of this little by-play. The younger was the first to recover herself.
"I will take two yards of that," she said, trying to make up for her momentary lapse by increased formality, and she threw half-a-sovereign on the counter, without inquiring the price.
Mona had just given her the parcel and the change, when Rachel came in full of obsequious interest, and inquiries about "your pa" and "your ma"; so Mona withdrew to the other side of the shop.
"I see you have got a new assistant, Miss Simpson," said Matilda patronisingly.
"I'm happy to say I have,—a relation of my own, too,—Miss Maclean."
Rachel meant it for an informal introduction, but Mona did not raise her eyes from the wools she was arranging.
"You will be glad to hear that the wound is a very trifling one," said Dr Dudley's pleasant voice a moment later, as he re-entered the shop and walked straight up to Mona. "Good morning." In spite of his previous rebuff, he held out his hand cordially, and, although Mona was somewhat amused, she appreciated the kindness of his motive too warmly to refuse his hand again.
And indeed it was a pleasant hand to take—firm, "live," brotherly, non-aggressive.
But she responded to his salutation with a very audible, "Good morning, sir."
"Damnation!" he said to himself, "the girl is as proud as Lucifer. She might have left the 'sir' alone for once."
From which you will perceive that Dr Dudley had heard something of the conversation which had just taken place, had guessed a little more, and had resolved in a very friendly spirit to play the part of a deus ex machinâ.
He went out of the shop in company with the red-haired girls.
"Do you know that young woman is a relation of Miss Simpson's?" asked one of them.
"I do."
"She might be a duchess from the airs she gives herself," said the other.
Dr Dudley was silent. It would be a gratuitous exaggeration to say that Mona would grace that or any other position, although the contrast she presented to these two girls made him feel strongly inclined to do so; and in any case it was always a mistake to show one's hand.
"Well, you needn't have said that about shop-girls all the same," said Matilda.
"I don't care! It would do her good to be taken down a peg."
"Ah, Miss Cookson," said Dr Dudley, thankfully seizing his opportunity, "don't you think it is dangerous work trying to take people down a peg? It requires such a delicate hand, that I never attempt it myself. One is so very apt to take one's self down instead."
He lifted his hat with a short "Good morning," and strode away in the opposite direction.
"Where were your eyes?" said Rachel, when the customers had left the shop. "Miss Cookson was going to shake hands with you, I believe; and they're the richest people in Borrowness."
"Thank you very much, dear," replied Mona quietly, "but one must draw the line somewhere. If our customers have less manners than Mrs Sanderson's pig, I will serve them to the best of my ability, but I must decline the honour of their personal acquaintance."
This explanation was intended mainly as a quiet snub to Rachel. In the life at Borrowness, nothing tried Mona more sorely than the way in which her cousin truckled to every one whom she considered her social superior; and it was almost unavoidable that Mona herself should be driven to the opposite extreme in her morbid resolution that no one should consider her guilty of the same meanness. "I don't suppose for a moment that those girls would bow to Rachel in the streets of St Rules," she thought. "Why can she not be content to look upon them as customers and nothing more?"
Poor Mona! She was certainly learning something of the seamiest side of the "wide, puzzling subject of compromise." Hitherto she had been responsible for herself alone, and so had lived simply and frankly; but now a thousand petty considerations were forced upon her in spite of herself, because she felt responsible for her cousin too.
"Well, they do say the Cooksons are conceited and stiff," said Rachel, "but they're always pleasant enough to me."
She found considerable satisfaction afterwards, however, in detailing to one of her friends how Mona had taken the bull by the horns, and had attributed the stiffness on which the Cooksons so prided themselves to simple want of manners. She felt as the people did in Hans Andersen's story when the first voice had found courage to say, "But he has got nothing on!" and she never again absolutely grovelled before the Cooksons.