Scotch Marriages, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

Even Primrose, who was of a hopeful disposition, with some well-placed / confidence in her social powers, had wondered what she could get to / say to Peggy in the intercourse which must follow, and Peggy had been / in mortal terror at the appalling necessity of making conversation / for Miss Ramsay. But after the first ten minutes the talk became / wonderfully easy between these two honest, single-hearted, gentle / souls, though they were on different levels of intelligence and / education. Peggy was entranced by what Primrose could tell of her / early visits to Drumsheugh -- including innumerable anecdotes of / the young laird. Why, Primrose was the first intimate friend and / equal -- like a sister of Drumsheugh's -- whom Peggy had ever known, who / could and would give the loving girl -- pining for talk of Drumsheugh in / his absence -- welcome, though not very recent information concerning / him. Primrose, in her turn, enjoyed drawing forth Peggy's tales of / her school days, when she had been the little class-fellow of both / Drumsheugh and Balcairnie.

Gradually and almost inadvertently Peggy passed in her talk from / her school to her home and her mother. When she would have stopped, / abashed, recollecting with tingling cheeks and a pang at her heart that / her husband and his mother had not cared for her recalling these tender / associations, she found, to her deep, ineffaceable gratitude, that it / was otherwise with Primrose Ramsay. ‘Tell me about your mother, Peggy; / I like to hear about mothers -- I think all the more because I have not / been so favoured as you. I never knew my mother; she died when I was / a child in arms. But your talk helps me to judge what my mother would / have been like -- is like. For our mothers are both alive, and we'll see / them yet in Heaven,'

Primrose introduced a new _régime_ at Drumsheugh -- a reign of order and / diligence, peace and prosperity. And in place of its being opposed by / Peggy or proving distasteful to her, it was hailed and clung to by her / with breathless, well-nigh pathetic eagerness. She was so desirous, / when the least prospect of attainment was held out to her, of being a / good wife, a mistress of Drumsheugh of whom its old owners need not be / altogether ashamed.

One of Primrose's first questions had been whether or not Johnny Fuggie / should be sent away after Jenny. If necessary, Primrose would assume / the responsibility of the dismissal, and save Peggy from every grain / of the pain of it. But after consultation with Balcairnie, and on / examination for herself, when the righteous young reformer found that / the man had only been a tool in Jenny's hands, like poor Cunnings, that / he had got a wholesome warning, and was capable of being induced to / behave with fitting respect and keep at a discreet distance from his / mistress -- especially when it was taken into account that he had a wife / and family whom it would go to Peggy's heart to punish through their / bread-winner -- Primrose agreed that Johnnie should remain on trial, so / to speak. The trial, as in the case of Cunnings, ended well. Johnnie, / in spite of his temporary aberration, his long tongue, and his foolish / conceit, behaved thenceforth very tolerably under difficulties. If / Peggy and he occasionally lapsed into too rash, free-and-easy gossip / when she happened to be alone with him in the garden, it was probably / as much her fault as his, and it might serve for a safety-valve in the / tension of their relations. Though poor Peggy would flutter off like / a lapwing when surprised in the indulgence, no serious harm followed, / and Drumsheugh was the last man in the world to come down heavily on so / natural and venial an offence.

Peggy, as a rule, showed herself very docile and a very quick pupil. / She only displayed a little restiveness now and then, when the lessons / trenched too closely on much-prized associations.

Primrose said one day, ‘You have very bonnie hair, Peggy, but I think / I could let you see how to dress it better, so that your friends might / more easily guess how long, and fine, and glossy it is.'

‘This was the way Drumsheugh liked my hair busket lang syne,' answered / Peggy, a little jealously; ‘and if I were to alter it, then it would / be to put on a mutch. My mother put on a mutch when she was married; / she held that all married women should wear mutches,' Peggy explained, / evidently a little troubled that she had not complied with her mother's / standard.

‘But maybe Drumsheugh will like your hair busket in another fashion / now,' said Primrose persuasively. ‘His fancy may be as taken with the / new as with the old way. His fondness does not rest with the past, / it is to last all your lives, and it will always be finding out new / beauties in his wife and her fashions. The glory of wedded love is / its growth in fidelity and its fidelity in growth. It is, or should / be, like God's love -- new every morning, and so it never gets stawed / (satiated), or tires, or shifts. As for the mutch, you can always wear / it of a morning in our rank, and you may come on to something like it / of an evening, if my cousin Jamie bring you, as I should not wonder / though he will, a fine lace ‘head' of Mechlin or Valenciennes.'

After that conversation, under the blissful prognostication of her / laird's finding new beauties in her every day, Peggy consented to / learn to put up her hair like Primrose's, in a modified version of / some becoming mode of the time, and thus came considerably nearer in / appearance to the conventional lady of her generation. So with her / clothes: Primrose taught Peggy how to choose them, and how to wear them.