'Did you fall? Or how did you cut your head?'
'Yes, yes, mem, I fell,' he answered, hastily, with an air of relief, and possibly with some tone of gratitude for the suggestion of a true answer.
'What made you fall?'
Utter silence again. She felt a kind of turn—I do not know another word to express what I mean: the boy must have fits, and either could not tell, or was ashamed to tell, what had befallen him. Thereafter she too was silent, and Robert thought she was offended. Possibly he felt a change in the touch of her fingers.
'Mem, I wad like to tell ye,' he said, 'but I daurna.'
'Oh! never mind,' she returned kindly.
'Wad ye promise nae to tell naebody?'
'I don't want to know,' she answered, confirmed in her suspicion, and at the same time ashamed of the alteration of feeling which the discovery had occasioned.
An uncomfortable silence followed, broken by Robert.
'Gin ye binna pleased wi' me, mem,' he said, 'I canna bide ye to gang on wi' siccan a job 's that.'