As for her darkness of earthly sight, this, she insisted, was the chief good which God had bestowed upon her, and she made out her case with the ingenuity of a faithful and contented heart.
“If I dinna see”—and she spoke as if this was a matter of doubt and she were making a concession for argument's sake—“there's naebody in the Glen can hear like me. There's no a footstep of a Drum-tochty man comes to the door but I ken his name, and there's no a voice oot on the road that I canna tell. The birds sing sweeter to me than to onybody else, and I can hear them cheeping to one another in the bushes before they go to sleep. And the flowers smell sweeter to me—the roses and the carnations and the bonny moss rose—and I judge that the oatcake and milk taste the richer because I dinna see them. Na, na, ye're no to think that I've been ill treated by my God, for if He didna give me ae thing, He gave me mony things instead.
“And mind ye, it's no as if I'd seen once and lost my sight; that micht ha' been a trial, and my faith micht have failed. I've lost naething; my life has been all getting.”
And she said confidentially one day to her elder, Donald Menzies—
“There's a mercy waitin' for me that'll crown a' His goodness, and I'm feared when I think o't, for I'm no worthy.”
“What iss that that you will be meaning, Marjorie,” said the elder.
“He has covered my face with His hand as a father plays with his bairn, but some day sune He will lift His hand, and the first thing that Marjorie sees in a' her life will be His ain face.”
And Donald Menzies declared to Bumbrae on the way home that he would gladly go blind all the days of his life if he were as sure of that sight when the day broke and the shadows fled away.