Chapter 23 - Page 2

me!" she had to add; "to think about altering bonnets on
the Sabbath-day! Lassie, how could you propose sic a thing?"

"Forgive me, Nanny," Babbie replied, so meekly that the old woman
looked at her curiously.

"I dinna understand what has come ower you," she said. "There's an
unca difference in you since last nicht. I used to think you were
mair like a bird than a lassie, but you've lost a' your daft
capers o' singing and lauching, and I take ill wi't. Twa or three
times I've catched you greeting. Babbie, what has come ower you?"

"Nothing, Nanny. I think I hear the bell."

Down in Thrums two kirk-officers had let their bells loose, waking
echoes in Windyghoul as one dog in country parts sets all the
others barking, but Nanny did not hurry off to church. Such a
surprising notion had filled her head suddenly that she even
forgot to hold her dress off the floor.

"Babbie," she cried, in consternation, "dinna tell me you've
gotten ower fond o' Mr. Dishart."

"The like of me, Nanny!" the gypsy answered, with affected
raillery, but there was a tear in her eye.

"It would be a wild, presumptious thing," Nanny said, "and him a
grand minister, but--"

Babbie tried to look her in the face, but failed, and then all at
once there came back to Nanny the days when she and her lover
wandered the hill together.

"Ah, my dawtie," she cried, so tenderly, "what does it matter wha
he is when you canna help it!"

Two frail arms went round the Egyptian, and Babbie rested her head
on the old woman's breast. But do you think it could have happened
had not Nanny loved a weaver two-score years before?

And now Nanny has set off for church and Babbie is alone in the
mud house. Some will pity her not at all, this girl who was a
dozen women in the hour, and all made of impulses that would
scarce stand still to be photographed. To attempt to picture her
at any time until now would have been like chasing a spirit that
changes to something else as your arms clasp it; yet she has
always seemed a pathetic little figure to me. If I understand
Babbie at all, it is, I think, because I loved Margaret, the only
woman I have ever known well, and one whose nature was not, like
the Egyptian's, complex, but most simple, as if God had told her
only to be good. Throughout my life since she came into it she has
been to me a glass in which many things are revealed that I could
not have learned save through her, and something of all womankind,
even of bewildering Babbie, I seem to know because I knew
Margaret.

No woman is so bad but we may rejoice when her heart