“In three days you may expect the money. Do your work as if you were not expecting it. Miss nothing of your duty.”
So Christine went the second morning, and had extraordinary success. Among the “Quality Houses” they were watching for her. They had never before seen such fine, and such fresh fish. They would have no others. She went home with her little purse full of silver, and her heart singing within her. It was not, after all, so bad to be a fisher-girl. If it was all small money, it was all ready money. And the people who had known her mother had remembered her, and spoken kindly of her, and Christine loved them for it. She had not yet forgotten. Oh no! Many times in the day and night she cried softly, “Mither! Mither! Where are ye? Dinna forget Christine!”
On the third morning she had a little adventure. She was delaying, for she was waiting for the mail, and had taken a cup of tea with her mother’s old friend. She stood in the doorway talking, and Christine was on the sidewalk, at the foot of the steps. Her empty basket was at her feet. She stood beside it, and the sunshine fell all over her. Its searching light revealed nothing but a perfection of form, a loveliness of face, and a charm of 320 manner, that defied all adverse criticism. She looked as the women of that elder world, who were the mothers of godlike heroes, must have looked.
Suddenly her friend ceased her conversation, and in a low hurried voice said,
“Here comes the young master, and his bride! Look at them.”
Then Christine turned her face to the street, and as she did so, a carriage passed slowly, and Angus Ballister looked at her with an unmistakable intention. It was a stern, contemptuous gaze, that shocked Christine. She could make no response but sheer amazement, and when the carriage had passed it required all her strength to say a steady “good-morning” to her friend, and hurry down the road homeward. Not then, and there, would she think of the insult. She put it passionately beneath the surface, until she reached her home, and had locked herself within its shelter. Then, she gave way utterly to her chagrin and sorrow, and wounded pride, and wept such bitter, cruel tears, as no other sorrow had ever caused her. She wept like a wounded child, who knows it has been cruelly treated, who comprehends the injustice of its pain and its own inability to defend itself, and finds no friend or helper in its suffering.
Finally, when perfectly exhausted, she fell asleep and slept till the sun set and the shadows of the night were on sea and land. Then she arose, washed her tear-stained face, and made her tea. In her 321 sleep she had been counseled and comforted, and she looked at the circumstance now with clear eyes.
“I got just what I deserved,” she said bluntly to herself. “Why did I go to the fishing at all? I wasna sent there. God took me awa’ from the fishing, and showed me what to do, just as He took King David from the sheep-cotes, and made him a soldier. If David had feared and doubted, and gone back to the sheep-cotes, he wouldna hae been King o’ Israel. Weel, when God took the nets out o’ my hands, and told me to sing, I got feared singing and story-telling wouldna feed me, and I went back to the nets. Now then, Christine, thank God for the snubbing you got. Yesterday I knew money was coming, plenty o’ it. Why didn’t I sit still or go to the wark He wants me to do. Why? Weel, if I must tell the bottom truth, I rayther fancied mysel’ in my fisher dress. I was pleased wi’ the admiration I got baith frae the men and the women. Something else, Christine? Ay, my Conscience, if I be to tell all, I liked the gossip o’ the women—also the pride I had in my ain strength and beauty, and the power it gave me o’er baith men and women—ay, and I liked to mak’ the siller in my ain fingers, as it were—to say to folk, ‘here’s your fish,’ and then feel their siller in the palm o’ my hand. I was wrang. I was vera wrang. I wad be served as I deserve, if thae book people went back on their word.”
Just here the Domine and Jamie came, and the 322 Domine had the letter with the money in it. Then he noticed that she had been crying, and he asked, “Who has been hurting you, Christine?” and she answered:
“Mysel’, Sir. I hae been hurting mysel’.” Then while he drank a cup of tea, she told him the little circumstance, which even yet made her draw her shoulders together, with a gasp of bitter chagrin.