“Gin ye please,” he answered gently, as if his daughter’s form had been mine now, and her hair were mine to give.
By the vestry door sat Mrs. Coombes, watching the dead, with her sweet solemn smile, and her constant ministration of knitting.
“Have you got a pair of scissors there, Mrs. Coombes?” I asked.
“Yes, to be sure, sir,” she answered, rising, and lifting a huge pair by the string suspending them from her waist.
“Cut off a nice piece of this beautiful hair,” I said.
She lifted the lovely head, chose, and cut off a long piece, and handed it respectfully to the father.
He took it without a word, sat down on the step before the communion-rail, and began to smooth out the wonderful sleave of dusky gold. It was, indeed, beautiful hair. As he drew it out, I thought it must be a yard long. He passed his big fingers through and through it, but tenderly, as if it had been still growing on the live lovely head, stopping every moment to pick out the bits of sea-weed and shells, and shake out the sand that had been wrought into its mass. He sat thus for nearly half-an-hour, and we stood looking on with something closely akin to awe. At length he folded it up, drew from his pocket an old black leather book, laid it carefully in the innermost pocket, and rose. I led the way from the church, and he followed me.
Outside the church, he laid his hand on my arm, and said, groping with his other hand in his trousers-pocket—
“She’ll hae putten ye to some expense—for the coffin an’ sic like.”
“We’ll talk about that afterwards,” I answered. “Come home with me now, and have some refreshment.”