At every answer, she looked up in his face with her open clear blue eyes. And the minister began to love her not merely because she was a child, but because she was this child.
"Do ye sing them?" he asked, after a little pause of pleased gazing into the face of the child.
"Na, na; I only say them. I dinna ken the tunes o' them."
"And do you say them to Mr Bruce?"
"Mr Bruce, sir! Mr Bruce wad say I was daft. I wadna say a sang to him, sir, for—for—for a' the sweeties i' the shop."
"Well, who do you say them to?"
"To Alec Forbes and Willie Macwha. They're biggin a boat, sir; and they like to hae me by them, as they big, to say sangs to them. And I like it richt weel."
"It'll be a lucky boat, surely," said the minister, "to rise to the sound of rhyme, like some old Norse war-ship."
"I dinna ken, sir," said Annie, who certainly did not know what he meant.
Now the minister's acquaintance with any but the classic poets was very small indeed; so that, when he got up and stood before his book-shelves, with the design of trying what he could do for her, he could think of nobody but Milton.