Babbie heard him and could not restrain a heart-breaking sob.
“What was that?” he said, starting.
A moment I waited, to let her show herself if she chose. But the mudhouse was silent again.
“It was some boy in the wood,” I answered.
“Good-bye,” he said, trying to smile.
Had I let him go, here would have been the end of his love story, but that piteous smile unmanned me, and I could not keep the words back.
“She is in Nanny’s house,” I cried.
In another moment these two were together for weal or woe, and I had set off dizzily for the school-house, feeling now that I had been false to Margaret, and again exulting in what I had done. By and by the bell stopped, and Gavin and Babbie regarded it as little as I heeded the burns now crossing the glen road noisily at places that had been dry two hours before.