Chapter 11

AARON LATTA

The Airlie post had dropped the letters for outlying farms at the
Monypenny smithy and trudged on. The smith having wiped his hand on his
hair, made a row of them, without looking at the addresses, on his
window-sill, where, happening to be seven in number, they were almost a
model of Monypenny, which is within hail of Thrums, but round the corner
from it, and so has ways of its own. With the next clang on the anvil
the middle letter fell flat, and now the likeness to Monypenny was
absolute.

Again all the sound in the land was the melancholy sweet kink, kink,
kink of the smith's hammer.

Across the road sat Dite Deuchars, the mole-catcher, a solitary figure,
taking his pleasure on the dyke. Behind him was the flour-miller's
field, and beyond it the Den, of which only some tree-tops were visible.
He looked wearily east the road, but no one emerged from Thrums; he
looked wearily west the road, which doubled out of sight at Aaron
Latta's cottage, little more than a stone's throw distant. On the inside
of Aaron's window an endless procession seemed to be passing, but it
was only the warping mill going round. It was an empty day, but Dite,
the accursed, was used to them; nothing ever happened where he was, but
many things as soon as he had gone.

He yawned and looked at the houses opposite. They were all of one story;
the smith's had a rusty plough stowed away on its roof; under a window
stood a pew and bookboard, bought at the roup of an old church, and thus
transformed into a garden-seat. There were many of them in Thrums that
year. All the doors, except that of the smithy, were shut, until one of
them blew ajar, when Dite knew at once, from the smell which crossed the
road, that Blinder was in the bunk pulling the teeth of his potatoes.
May Ann Irons, the blind man's niece, came out at this door to beat the
cistern with a bass, and she gave Dite a wag of her head. He was to be
married to her if she could get nothing better.

By and by the Painted Lady came along the road. She was a little woman,
brightly dressed, so fragile that a collie might have knocked her over
with his tail, and she had a beautiful white-and-pink face, the white
ending of a sudden in the middle of her neck, where it met skin of a
duller color. As she tripped along with mincing gait, she was speaking
confidentially to herself, but when she saw Dite grinning, she seemed,
first, afraid, and then sorry for herself, and then she tried to carry
it off with a giggle, cocking her head impudently at him. Even then she
looked childish, and a faded guilelessness, with many pretty airs and
graces, still lingered about her, like innocent birds loath to be gone
from the spot where their nest has been. When she had