“And, therefore, would scorn me.”
“Try her,” said the doctor, drily. “Her father and mother, as I know, married on a ten-pound note. But if I am wrong again, I must adopt the popular view in Thrums. It is a Glasgow lady after all? Man, you needn’t look indignant at hearing that the people are discussing your intended. You can no more stop it than a doctor’s orders could keep Lang Tammas out of 182 church. They have discovered that she sends you flowers twice every week.”
“They never reach me,” answered Gavin, then remembered the holly and winced.
“Some,” persisted the relentless doctor, “even speak of your having been seen together; but of course, if she is a Glasgow lady, that is a mistake.”
“Where did they see us?” asked Gavin, with a sudden trouble in his throat.
“You are shaking,” said the doctor, keenly, “like a medical student at his first operation. But as for the story that you and the lady have been seen together, I can guess how it arose. Do you remember that gypsy girl?”
The doctor had begun by addressing the fire, but he suddenly wheeled round and fired his question in the minister’s face. Gavin, however, did not even blink.
“Why should I have forgotten her?” he replied, coolly.
“Oh, in the stress of other occupations. But it was your getting the money from her at the Kaims for Nanny that I was to speak of. Absurd though it seems, I think some dotard must have seen you and her at the Kaims, and mistaken her for the lady.”
McQueen flung himself back in his chair to enjoy this joke.