“There ’tis!” returned her father. “And I dinna think,” he went on, “we could expec muckle frae the wisdom o’ the mither o’ ’m, gien she had him. I doobt she micht turn oot to be but a makshift hersel! There’s mony aboot ’im ’at’ll be sair eneuch upon ’im, but nane the wiser for that! Mony ane’ll luik upon ’im as a bairn in whause existence God has had nae share—or jist as muckle share as gies him a grup o’ ’im to gie ’im his licks! There’s a heap o’ mystery aboot a’thing, Maggie, and that frae the vera beginnin to the vera en’! It may be ’at yon bairnie’s i’ the waur danger jist frae haein you and me, Maggie! Eh, but I wuss his ain mither war gien back til him! And wha can tell but she’s needin him waur nor he’s needin her—though there maun aye be something he canna get—’cause ye’re no his ain mither, Maggie, and I’m no even his ain gutcher!”
The adoptive mother burst into a howl.
“Father, father, ye’ll brak the hert o’ me!” she almost yelled, and laid the child on the top of her father’s hands in the very act of drawing his waxed ends.
Thus changing him perforce from cobbler to nurse, she bolted from the kitchen, and up the little stair; and throwing herself on her knees by the bedside, sought, instinctively and unconsciously, the presence of him who sees in secret. But for a time she had nothing to say even to him, and could only moan on in the darkness beneath her closed eyelids.
Suddenly she came to herself, remembering that she too had abandoned her child: she must go back to him!
But as she ran, she heard loud noises of infantile jubilation, and re-entering the kitchen, was amazed to see the soutar’s hands moving as persistently if not quite so rapidly as before: the child hung at the back of the soutar’s head, in the bight of the long jack-towel from behind the door, holding on by the gray hair of his occiput. There he tugged and crowed, while his care-taker bent over his labour, circumspect in every movement, nor once forgetting the precious thing on his back, who was evidently delighted with his new style of being nursed, and only now and then made a wry face at some movement of the human machine too abrupt for his comfort. Evidently he took it all as intended solely for his pleasure.
Maggie burst out laughing through the tears that yet filled her eyes, and the child, who could hear but not see her, began to cry a little, so rousing the mother in her to a sense that he was being treated too unceremoniously; when she bounded to liberate him, undid the towel, and seated herself with him in her lap. The grandfather, not sorry to be released, gave his shoulders a little writhing shake, laughed an amused laugh, and set off boring and stitching and drawing at redoubled speed.
“Weel, Maggie?” he said, with loving interrogation, but without looking up.
“I saw ye was richt, father, and it set me greitin sae sair that I forgot the bairn, and you, father, as weel. Gang on, please, and say what ye think fit: it’s a’ true!”
“There’s little left for me to say, lassie, noo ye hae begun to say’t to yersel. But, believe me, though ye can never be the bairn’s ain mither, she can never be til ’im the same ye hae been a’ready, whatever mair or better may follow. The pairt ye hae chosen is guid eneuch never to be taen frae ye—i’ this warl or the neist!”