The
method has its advantages. It leaves her, swept and garnished,
without a scrap of ill-feeling towards any living soul. For quite a
long period after one of these explosions it is impossible to get a
cross word out of her. One has to wait sometimes for months. But
while the clearing up is in progress the atmosphere round about is
disturbing. The element of the whole thing is its comprehensive
swiftness. Before they had reached the summit of the hill, Robina
had acquired a tolerably complete idea of all she had done wrong
since Christmas twelvemonth: the present afternoon's proceedings--
including as they did the almost certain sacrificing of a sister to a
violent death, together with the probable destruction of a father, no
longer of an age to trifle with apoplexy--being but a fit and proper
complement to what had gone before. It would be long, as Robina
herself that evening bitterly declared, before she would again give
ear to the promptings of her better nature.
To take next the sad case of Archibald Bute: his sole desire had
been to relieve, at the earliest moment possible, the anxieties of a
sister and a mother. Robina's new hat, not intended for sport, had
broken away from its fastenings. With it, it had brought down her
hair. There is a harmless contrivance for building up the female
hair called, I am told, a pad. It can be made of combings, and then,
of course, is literally the girl's own hair.
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