Now John was reputed to be as wise a man as there was in the town, or for that matter any town whatever, and his wife—well I should not like to be the goose whose wings should supply the quills to write or describe all the virtues ascribed to this good lady by her neighbours.
John’s wife, she was called, and likewise surnamed the Witty. Eppie was her name—Witty Eppie. There you have it. “A virtuous wife,” says Solomon, “is a crown unto her husband.” Well John’s wife was all that to him, and more besides. In point of fact, John was often heard to say, “It was for my Eppie’s goodness I married her,” and he was generally believed for this simple reason—it could not have been for her beauty. No; Nature had dealt sparingly with her as far as beauty was concerned. But then, Nature could hardly be expected to give her all things. She had an honest sonsy face of her own, though, for all that, and a motherly look in it too, although so far from being a fruitful vine, she never had borne fruit at all.
“John is my bairn,” Eppie would say, “and between him and the creel it tak’s me a’ my time, ’oman.”
In figure, Eppie was rather rotund and somewhat given to corpulency without, but then she had a Herculean frame to bear it. “A broad back to a big burden,” was another of her sayings, for, like all Scottish fisherwomen, she was much addicted to quoting proverbs, which she was wont to term “the pepper dulse” of conversation.[7] Yet if she was not a bonnie fishwife, she was at best a handsome one—six feet tall if an inch, and well-made in proportion. On the other hand, John himself was what might with fear of any serious contradiction be called a spare man—a wee wee man—a man of bone and sinew certainly, but of little else. Well, he might have been of feet four, and of inches double the number, and it would have done your heart good to have seen the worthy couple going to church on a Sabbath-day, which, to their credit be it told, they never failed to do. The best view was to be obtained from behind. Here, you could observe the exact difference in stature, for John’s Sunday’s hat, which never, never sat easily on his head, and was always bobbing from one side to another, scarcely reached his better half’s shoulder. The difference too in the breadth of beam was here very apparent—the vast and ample folds of the red tartan shawl on the one hand, and the short waggling swallow tails of the little green coat with its plain brass buttons on the other.
Despise not that dumpy garment, reader, for it was his best. It was his marriage coat, and he had never got another since.
The next best view of the loving couple was the side view. There you could observe and marvel at the vast difference in length of step, at least John’s was a step, Eppie’s was a stride, and when, as sometimes would occur, the church-bells ceased to ring before they reached the gate, oh! to see the way she lugged the poor little man along by the hand! Still, even under these circumstances, Eppie could afford to walk, but—I almost sob to say it—wee Johnnie had to trot. In a word, imagine an ostrich walking to church with a rook, and you see them. Good simple couple, the minister never missed them from the kirk a single Sunday from that auspicious day when he had joined their hands, until the mournful morning when the old hearse wound slowly down the long loaning that conveyed poor wee Johnnie to his home in the mould, while every wife in Blackhive stood at her door with her apron to her eyes. But of this more anon.
Eppie was as kind to her husband as kind could be, and it is but fair to say that for this she took no credit.
“De’il thank me,” she used to exclaim, “wha could be onything else to the poor wee worriting body?”
Yet, while never failing in household duties—and there never was a button missing from John’s shirt, never was his big toe seen staring impudently through a hole in his stocking, neither did he ever come home wet and cold without finding a change of well-aired warm raiment, a warm meal, and some creature comforts besides waiting for him—John’s wife found plenty of time to do kind and friendly actions to her neighbours too.
Honest woman, she was always welcome wherever she went, for she carried a ray of light into the darkest and gloomiest cottage. Even death itself did not seem so terrible when Eppie stood at the bedside.