“I believe you had only a lover’s quarrel
with Lord Rintoul last night,” she said to Babbie
in the afternoon. “Ah, you see I can guess
what is taking you to the window so often. You
must not think him long in coming for you. I
can assure you that the rain which keeps my son from
me must be sufficiently severe to separate even true
lovers. Take an old woman’s example, Babbie.
If I thought the minister’s absence alarming,
I should be in anguish; but as it is, my mind is so
much at ease that, see, I can thread my needle.”
It was in less than an hour after Margaret spoke thus
tranquilly to Babbie that the precentor got into the
manse.
Margaret, the precentor. And
god between.
Unless Andrew Luke, who went to Canadas be still above
ground, I am now the only survivor of the few to whom
Lang Tammas told what passed in the manse parlor after
the door closed on him and Margaret. With the
years the others lost the details, but before I forget
them the man who has been struck by lightning will
look at his arm without remembering what shrivelled
it. There even came a time when the scene seemed
more vivid to me than to the precentor, though that
was only after he began to break up.
“She was never the kind o’ woman,”
Whamond said, “that a body need be nane feared
at. You can see she is o’ the timid sort.
I couldna hae selected a woman easier to speak bold
out to, though I had ha’en my pick o’
them.”
He was a gaunt man, sour and hard, and he often paused
in his story with a puzzled look on his forbidding
face.
“But, man, she was so michty windy o’
him. If he had wanted to put a knife into her,
I believe that woman would just hae telled him to
take care no to cut his hands. Ay, and what innocent-like
she was! If she had heard enough, afore I saw
her, to make her uneasy, I could hae begun at once;
but here she was, shaking my hand and smiling to me,
so that aye when I tried to speak I gaed through ither.
Nobody can despise me for it, I tell you, mair than
I despise mysel’.
“I thocht to mysel’, ’Let her hae
her smile out, Tammas Whamond; it’s her hinmost,’
Syne wi’ shame at my cowardliness, I tried to
yoke to my duty as chief elder o’ the kirk, and
I said to her, as thrawn as I could speak, ’Dinna
thank me; I’ve done nothing for you.’
“‘I ken it wasna for me you did it,’
she said, ’but for him; but, oh, Mr. Whamond,
will that make me think the less o’ you?
He’s my all,’ she says, wi’ that
smile back in her face, and a look mixed up wi’t
that said as plain, ‘and I need no more.’
I thocht o’ saying that some builds their house
upon the sand, but—dagont, dominie, it’s
a solemn thing the pride mithers has in their laddies.
I mind aince my ain mither—what the devil
are you glowering at, Andrew Luke? Do you think
I’m greeting?
“‘You’ll sit down, Mr. Whamond,’
she says next.”
