V.
On the following day about the same hour Dr. Brunton approached the lodge where he had come so often full of pity, and had submitted to be bored with a good grace. But instead of dragging himself up to make this visit as a tiresome duty, which he had sometimes felt it to be, it had floated before his mind all day, and he went through the gate with the most vivid and even tremulous expectation and interest. But the celestial beauty in the amber beads was not there. He sat and listened patiently to the old woman's story, and various times tried to draw her out about her visitor of yesterday; but she was so occupied with herself that she could speak of nothing else, and he left with a stinging, empty sense of disappointment, as he did on the next day, and the next; but on the fourth the rustic beauty reappeared, as innocently simple and slightly sheepish in manner as before.
"You have not been here for some days?" the doctor said to her.
"Na, I couldna coom."
"Why not?"
"My faither said I was to bide in the house and mind my wark."
"What do you do? Can you read well?"
"Oh, ay, I can read no that ill: I whiles take a lesson on the newspapers."
"Can you write?"
"Weel, I canna say muckle for my writing, but the likes o' us hae nae time to put off writing;" and she sent her eyes right into the eyes of the doctor, as they stood beside Bell's little window—innocently, simply, appealingly, the doctor felt—and from that moment he was a lost man: his prudence went down like straws before the wind.
"You are far too beautiful," he said with deep earnestness, "to go to service: would you not like to be educated and be a lady?"
"Oh, I wad like it weel aneuch, I daur say, but I'll just hae to be content wi' the place I'm in: I've a heap to be thankfu' for, and I maun bide wi' my faither."
"But you'll not be with him if you are at service?"
"No, but I can help him with the siller I mak."
The doctor was silent. This girl was good, then, as well as beautiful.
"Are you his only child?" he asked: "have you no brothers or sisters?"
"I've nae brothers, but I've twa sisters."
"And what do they do?"
"The ane's married, and, the ither bides at name like me, except when she's awa'."
"She can't be so beautiful as you?"
"Do ye think me so extra weel-faured, sir?" she said with much simplicity, and glancing at the morsel of looking-glass that hung by the window. "Whether do ye like my yellow beads or my blue anes best? I put on my blue anes the day: my sister's gudeman give me them when they were married."
"Are you fond of beads?"
"Oh, ay—they set a body off, divn't they?"
"You set them off: everything near you looks well because it is near you."
"Ye've a fair tongue, sir."
"I always speak the truth."
"I believe that," she said; and again her eyes looked into the doctor's with childish simplicity.
"What about, sir?"
"About anything: if you want a friend you'll trust me?"
"Oh, ay, sir: I'll do that; but I'm no ill off for friends."
"I should think not," he said. "Where does your married sister live?"
"Oh, far away—away up on the English hand."
"What is her husband?"
"He has a bit land o' his ain, sir: she made a gude marriage, it's thought, but I whiles jalouse he's no very gude to her."
"Surely not, surely not," said the doctor; and a vision crossed him of this beautiful and simple girl he was speaking to marrying some coarse working-man, and being made a hardly-used drudge of to the end of her days; and he determined it should not be. He determined it should not be: surely, she was born for some better fate. The very idea of it made him feel dazed, and it was possible that even now she was pledged to some such thing. Another man would have had no difficulty in "chaffing" her on such a subject and finding out all he wanted to know, but this man could not: even if chaffing had been a habit with him, he could not have done it in this instance: his feeling was far too deep and real and reverent to admit of it. He went back to his patient and tried to listen to her story as usual, but in truth it was little of it that he heard. He was in a dream.
After he went away, Bell looked across to her young attendant, who was sweeping up about the fireside in active business-style, and said, "My bonnie leddy, see that ye dinna wark mischief."
"I'm no settin' up a stour, am I?" the girl said.
"Weel, see that ye dinna set up a stour," Bell answered.