"What?"
"What, have you not noticed? on his little finger."
Granny looked, and there was a little brown mole.
"Eh! but this is wonderful!" she cried. "Nature, my lass, y' are strong; and meddlesome to boot. Hast noticed such a mark on some one else. Tell the truth, girl!"
"What, on him? Nay, mother, not I."
"Well then he has; and on the very spot. And you never noticed that much. But, dear heart, I forgot; you han't known him from child to man as I have. I have had him hundreds o' times on my knees, the same as this, and washed him from top to toe in lu-warm water." And she swelled with conscious superiority; and Margaret looked meekly up to her as a woman beyond competition.
Catherine looked down from her dizzy height, and moralized. She differed from other busy-bodies in this, that she now and then reflected: not deeply; or of course I should take care not to print it.
"It is strange," said she, "how things come round and about. Life is but a whirligig. Leastways, we poor women, our lives are cut upon one pattern. Wasn't I for washing out my Gerard's mole in his young days? 'Oh, fie! her's a foul blot,' quo' I; and scrubbed away at it I did till I made the poor wight cry; so then I thought 'twas time to give over. And now says you to me, 'Mother,' says you, 'do try and wash yon out o' my Gerard's finger,' says you. Think on't!"
"Wash it out?" cried Margaret; "I wouldn't for all the world. Why it is the sweetest bit in his little darling body. I'll kiss it morn and night till he, that owned it first, comes back to us three. Oh, bless you, my jewel of gold and silver, for being marked like your own daddy to comfort me."
And she kissed little Gerard's little mole; but she could not stop there; she presently had him sprawling on her lap, and kissed his back all over again and again, and seemed to worry him as wolf a lamb; Catherine looking on and smiling. She had seen a good many of these savage onslaughts in her day.