Gathered In by Catherine Helen Spence — Read

"Well," began Carmichael, "so far as I can recollect after this lapse of time (for our young friend here has a beard on his face, and must be four--and-twenty now), I'll tell you the whole story. Norman McDiarmid was a student at Edinburgh College when I was there as a private tutor. I had got my degree, but had not gone in for the Kirk, and I was glad to do anything I could get. He was the heir to an old Highland property, and the family as proud as you like, but not over rich for their pretensions. However, he was just twenty-one, and had come into a sum of about fifteen hundred pounds that was left to him by a maiden aunt. His father was dead, and his mother lived with her father-in-law, who was The McDiarmid at the time. Norman was very handsome, and very much liked, and I think the grandfather wanted him to pick up a rich wife, and did not object to his spending his money freely, and visiting a good deal while he had his college course.

"He was very free-handed, and I'll not say that he did not do me a good turn now and then, for I always was hard up, and we had a good deal of fun and frolic, as young men will have when they are together. But he had an only sister, Flora her name was, at a boarding-school in Edinburgh, and he was much taken up with her, and would break through any sort of engagement if she wanted him. Well, the sister took scarlet fever at the school, and she was put in a room by herself, and kept quite separate, and Isabel Oswald, who was in a place of trust in the school, who had had the fever, and whom this Flora McDiarmid was very fond of, was appointed to nurse her. Norman had had it too, and as he was particularly fond of his sister, as I have told you, and as she was very ill, he could not be kept away, and so he saw a great deal of Isabel Oswald. Now, though Isabel was dressed suitable to her station, that did not hinder her from being the prettiest girl in Edinburgh, at least I am sure Norman thought so, and I dare say the great care she took of his sister made her look all the better in his eyes.