How lovely the flowers in the dyke-sides looked as she followed Mrs Gordon home! But the thought that perhaps Curly had told him something was like the serpent under them. Yet somehow she had got so beautiful before she reached the house, that her aunt, who had come to see her, called out,
"Losh! lassie! What hae ye been aboot? Ye hae a colour by ordinar'."
"That's easy accoontet for," said her mistress roguishly. "She was stan'in' killoguin wi' a bonnie young lad an' a horse. I winna hae sic doin's aboot my hoose, I can tell ye, lass."
Margaret Anderson flew into a passion, and abused her with many words, which Annie, so far from resenting, scarcely even heard. At length she ceased, and departed almost without an adieu. But what did it matter?-�What did any earthly thing matter, if only Curly had not told him?
Now, all that Curly had told Alec was that Annie was not engaged to him.
So the days and nights passed, and Spring, the girl, changed into
Summer, the woman; and still Alec did not come.
One evening, when a wind that blew from the west, and seemed to smell of the roses of the sunset, was filling her rosy heart with joy�-Annie sat in a rough little seat, scarcely an arbour, at the bottom of a garden of the true country order, where all the dear old-fashioned glories of sweet-peas, cabbage-roses, larkspur, gardener's garters, honesty, poppies, and peonies, grew in homely companionship with gooseberry and currant bushes, with potatoes and pease. The scent of the sunset came in reality from a cheval de frise of wallflower on the coping of the low stone wall behind where she was sitting with her Milton. She read aloud in a low voice that sonnet beginning "Lady that in the prime of earliest youth." As she finished it, a voice, as low, said, almost in her ear,
"That's you, Annie."
Alec was looking over the garden wall behind her.
"Eh, Alec," she cried, starting to her feet, at once shocked and delighted, "dinna say that. It's dreidfu' to hear ye say sic a thing. I wish I was a wee like her."