“What rizzon was there for onybody to ken? I’m sure ye never tellt!”
Isy went to the door and called Maggie. James stared after her, bewildered.
“There was this rizzon,” she said, re-entering with the child, and laying him in James’s arms.
He gasped with astonishment, almost consternation.
“Is this mine?” he stammered.
“Yours and mine, sir,” she replied. “Wasna God a heap better til me nor I deserved?—Sic a bonnie bairn! No a mark, no a spot upon him frae heid to fut to tell that he had no business to be here!—Gie the bonnie wee man a kiss, Mr. Blatherwick. Haud him close to ye, sir, and he’ll tak the pain oot o’ yer heart: aften has he taen ’t oot o’ mine—only it aye cam again!—He’s yer ain son, sir! He cam to me bringin the Lord’s forgiveness, lang or ever I had the hert to speir for ’t. Eh, but we maun dee oor best to mak up til God’s bairn for the wrang we did him afore he was born! But he’ll be like his great Father, and forgie us baith!”
As soon as Maggie had given the child to his mother, she went to her father, and sat down beside him, crying softly. He turned on his leather stool, and looked at her.
“Canna ye rejice wi’ them that rejice, noo that ye hae nane to greit wi’, Maggie, my doo?” he said. “Ye haena lost ane, and ye hae gaint twa! Haudna the glaidness back that’s sae fain to come to the licht i’ yer grudgin hert, Maggie! God himsel ’s glaid, and the Shepherd’s glaid, and the angels are a’ makin sic a flut-flutter wi’ their muckle wings ’at I can ’maist see nor hear for them!”
Maggie rose, and stood a moment wiping her eyes. The same instant the door opened, and James entered with the little one in his arms. He laid him with a smile in Maggie’s.
“Thank you, sir!” said the girl humbly, and clasped the child to her bosom; nor, after that, was ever a cloud of jealousy to be seen on her face. I will not say she never longed or even wept after the little one, whom she still regarded as her very own, even when he was long gone away with his father and mother; indeed she mourned for him then like a mother from whom death has taken away her first-born and only son; neither did she see much difference between the two forms of loss; for Maggie felt in her heart that life nor death could destroy the relation that already existed between them: she could not be her father’s daughter and not understand that! Therefore, like a bereaved mother, she only gave herself the more to her father.