For a moment there was silence, the old woman’s head had drooped on her breast, and the knitting wires clicked more slowly, like a clock before it stops.
But only for a moment; she raised her head again, and click, click, click, went the wires as fast as before, but both Kenneth and his companion noticed that Nancy’s cheeks were wet.
“Nancy’s auld and silly,” she said, “but Nancy was not always so. Heigho!”
“Oh, Grannie!” cried honest Dugald, hastening to atone for the cruelty of his first speech, but, in his very hurry, making a poor job of it. “Oh, Grannie, dinna say you’re silly; really folk say you’re wise and—and—”
“A witch?” said Nancy, smiling.
“Well, may be so. Who can help what people say? But ’deed there is no’ a poor woman or man either in a’ the glen or parish that hasn’t a good word to say for you. Your simple medicines, Grannie, have brought comfort and joy to mony a hoose, no matter where ye got them or who—goodness be near us—helped you to gather them. When puir Jock Kelpie was drooned, did you no’ bide and comfort the widow, and sing to her and soothe her for weeks thegither? When Menzies’ bairns had the fever, and no’ a soul would gang near the hoose, wha tended them and cured them? Wha but Nancy Dobbell? And there’s no’ a bairn in a’ the clachan that doesn’t run to meet ye, Grannie, whenever ye come o’er the muir.”
The wires clicked very fast.
“And,” continued Dugald, “though you’re maybe no’ very bonnie noo, everybody says, ‘What a pretty woman Nancy must have been in her time!’”
Nancy’s chin fell again, but the wires worked steadily on. Her mind was away back now in the distant past. She was thinking of one summer’s evening by Saint Ronan’s Well, ’neath the old monk’s tree, of a plighted troth and a broken ring, and a lad that went away to sea, and never, never, never came back. A broken ring, and a broken heart, a sorrow that had shadowed her life.