Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/152

RV 84 (Rh) Mary would probably have joined, but that she was now in her little sleeping-chamber with Tibb, who was exerting her simple skill to console the young lady for her mother's death. But the younger Glendinning stood up in defence of her property, and, with a positiveness which had hitherto made no part of his character, declared, that now the kind lady was dead, the book was Mary's, and no one but Mary should have it.

'But if it is not a fit book for Mary to read, my dear boy,' said the father gently, 'you would not wish it to remain with her?'

'The lady read it,' answered the young champion of property; 'and so it could not be wrong; it shall not be taken away. I wonder where Halbert is?—listening to the bravading tales of gay Christie, I reckon! He is always wishing for fighting, and now he is out of the way.'

'Why, Edward, you would not fight with me, who am both a priest and an old man?'

'If you were as good a priest as the Pope,' said the boy, 'and as old as the hills to boot, you shall not carry away Mary's book without her leave. I will do battle for it.'

'But see you, my love,' said the monk, amused with the resolute friendship manifested by the boy, 'I do not take it; I only borrow it; and I leave in its place my own gay missal, as a pledge I will bring it again.'

Edward opened the missal with eager curiosity, and glanced at the pictures with which it was illustrated. 'Saint George and the Dragon—Halbert will like that; and Saint Michael brandishing his sword over the head of the Wicked One—and that will do for Halbert too. And see the Saint John leading his lamb in the wilderness, with his little cross made of reeds, and his scrip and staff—that shall be my favourite; and where shall we find one for poor Mary?—here is a beautiful woman weeping and lamenting herself.'

'This is Saint Mary Magdalen repenting of her sins, my dear boy,' said the father.

'That will not suit our Mary; for she commits no faults, and is never angry with us but when we do something wrong.'

'Then,' said the father, 'I will show you a Mary, who