“Give it me, Nanny.”
“It winna come off my finger.” She
gloated over it, nursed it, kissed it.
“I must have it, Nanny.”
The Egyptian put her hand lightly on the old woman’s
shoulder, and Nanny jumped up, pressing the ring to
her bosom. Her face had become cunning and ugly;
she retreated into a corner.
“Nanny, give me back my ring or I will take
it from you.”
The cruel light of the diamond was in Nanny’s
eyes for a moment, and then, shuddering, she said,
“Tak your ring awa, tak it out o’ my sicht.”
In the meantime Gavin was trudging home gloomily composing
his second sermon against women. I have already
given the entry in my own diary for that day:
this is his:—“Notes on Jonah.
Exchanged vol. xliii., ‘European Magazine,’
for Owen’s ‘Justification’ (per
flying stationer). Began Second Samuel. Visited
Nanny Webster.” There is no mention of
the Egyptian.
Continued misbehaviour of the
Egyptian woman.
By the following Monday it was known at many
looms that something sat heavily on the Auld Licht
minister’s mind. On the previous day he
had preached his second sermon of warning to susceptible
young men, and his first mention of the word “woman”
had blown even the sleepy heads upright. Now
he had salt fish for breakfast, and on clearing the
table Jean noticed that his knife and fork were uncrossed.
He was observed walking into a gooseberry bush by Susy
Linn, who possessed the pioneer spring-bed of Thrums,
and always knew when her man jumped into it by suddenly
finding herself shot to the ceiling. Lunan, the
tinsmith, and two women, who had the luck to be in
the street at the time, saw him stopping at Dr. McQueen’s
door, as if about to knock, and then turning smartly
away. His hat blew off in the school wynd, where
a wind wanders ever, looking for hats, and he chased
it so passionately that Lang Tammas went into Allardyce’s
smiddy to say—
“I dinna like it. Of course he couldna
afford to lose his hat, but he should hae run after
it mair reverently.”
Gavin, indeed, was troubled. He had avoided speaking
of the Egyptian to his mother. He had gone to
McQueen’s house to ask the doctor to accompany
him to the Kaims, but with the knocker in his hand
he changed his mind, and now he was at the place of
meeting alone. It was a day of thaw, nothing
to be heard from a distance but the swish of curling-stones
through water on Rashie-bog, where the match for the
eldership was going on. Around him. Gavin
saw only dejected firs with drops of water falling
listlessly from them, clods of snow, and grass that
rustled as if animals were crawling through it.
All the roads were slack.
I suppose no young man to whom society has not become
a cheap thing can be in Gavin’s position, awaiting
the coming of an attractive girl, without giving thought
to what he should say to her. When in the pulpit
or visiting the sick, words came in a rush to the
little minister, but he had to set his teeth to determine
what to say to the Egyptian.
