“Not to-night,” said Gavin.
“To-night, if at all,” the gypsy almost entreated.
“To-morrow, at Nanny’s,” answered Gavin, decisively: and this time he remembered without dismay that the morrow was the Sabbath.
In the fairy tale the beast suddenly drops his skin and is a prince, and I believed it seemed to Babbie that some such change had come over this man, her plaything.
“Your lantern is shining on my mother’s window,” were the words that woke her from this discovery, and then she found herself yielding the lantern to him. She became conscious vaguely that a corresponding change was taking place in herself.
“You spoke of taking me to your mother,” she said, bitterly.
“Yes,” he answered at once, “to-morrow”; but she shook her head, knowing that to-morrow he would be wiser.
“Give me the lantern,” she said, in a low voice, “I am going back to Nanny’s now.”
“Yes,” he said, “we must set out now, but I can carry the lantern.”