Said he: “If it’s Wullie, ye’re thinkin’ o’, I’ll square him.”
“Wullie!” she exclaimed, a cruel contempt in the word.
“Weel, if naebody else is takin’ ye, will ye gang wi’ me?”
“Dae—dae ye want me, Macgreegor?”
“I’m askin’ ye.”
She glanced at him furtively, but he was not looking at her; his hands were in his pockets, his mouth was shaped to emit a tuneless whistle. She tried to laugh, but made only a throaty sound. It seemed as if a stranger stood before her, one of whom she knew nothing save his name. And yet she liked that stranger and wanted much to go to the dance with him.
The whistling ceased.
“Are ye gaun wi’ somebody else?” he demanded, lifting his face for a moment.
It was not difficult to guess that something acute had happened to him very recently. Jessie Mary suddenly experienced a guilty pang. Yet why Macgregor should have come back to her now was beyond her comprehension. Yon yellow-haired girl in the shop could not have told him anything—that was certain. And though she had not really wanted him back, now that he had come she was fain to hold him once more. Such thoughts made confusion in her mind, out of which two distinct, ideas at last emerged: she did not care if she had hurt the yellow-haired girl; she could not go to the dance on Macgregor’s money.
So gently, sadly, she told her lie; “Ay, there’s somebody else, Macgreegor.” Which suggests that no waist is too small to contain an appreciable amount of heart and conscience.