Chapter 14 - Page 2

"Lassie," cried Nanny, "mind wha you're speaking to. To send a
minister to the well!"

"I will go," said Gavin, recklessly lifting the pitcher. "The well
is in the wood, I think?"

"Gie me the pitcher, Mr. Dishart," said Nanny, in distress. "What
a town there would be if you was seen wi't!"

"Then he must remain here and keep the house till we come back,"
said the Egyptian, and thereupon departed, with a friendly wave of
her hand to the minister.

"She's an awfu' lassie," Nanny said, apologetically, "but it'll
just be the way she has been brought up."

"She has been very good to you, Nanny."

"She has; leastwise, she promises to be. Mr. Dishart, she's awa';
what if she doesna come back?"

Nanny spoke nervously, and Gavin drew a long face.

"I think she will," he said faintly. "I am confident of it," he
added in the same voice.

"And has she the siller?"

"I believe in her," said Gavin, so doggedly that his own words
reassured him. "She has an excellent heart."

"Ay," said Nanny, to whom the minister's faith was more than the
Egyptian's promise, "and that's hardly natural in a gaen-aboot
body. Yet a gypsy she maun be, for naebody would pretend to be ane
that wasna. Tod, she proved she was an Egyptian by dauring to send
you to the well."

This conclusive argument brought her prospective dower so close to
Nanny's eyes that it hid the poorhouse.

"I suppose she'll gie you the money," she said, "and syne you'll
gie me the seven shillings a week?"

"That seems the best plan," Gavin answered.

"And what will you gie it me in?" Nanny asked, with something on
her mind. "I would be terrible obliged if you gae it to me in
saxpences."

"Do the smaller coins go farther?" Gavin asked, curiously.

"Na, it's no that. But I've heard tell o' folk giving away half-
crowns by mistake for twa-shilling bits; ay, and there's something
dizzying in ha'en fower-and-twenty pennies In one piece; it has
sic terrible little bulk. Sanders had aince a gold sovereign, and
he looked at it so often that it seemed to grow smaller and
smaller in his hand till he was feared it micht just be a half
after all."

Her mind relieved on this matter, the old woman set off for the
well. A minute afterwards Gavin went to the door to look for the
gypsy, and, behold, Nanny was no further than the gate. Have you
who read ever been sick near to death, and then so far recovered
that you could once again stand at your window?