“——Mr. Dishart has been called to a sick-bed in the country, ma’am—to the farm o’ Look-About-You; and as it’s sic a rain, he’s to bide there a’ nicht.”
“And Whamond came through that rain to tell me this? How good of him. Was there any other message?”
“Just that the minister hoped you would go straight to your bed, ma’am,” said Jean, thinking to herself, “There can be no great sin in giving her one mair happy nicht; it may be her last.”
The two women talked for a short time, and then read verse about in the parlor from the third chapter of Mark.
“This is the first night we have been left alone in the manse,” Margaret said, as she was retiring to her bedroom, “and we must not grudge the minister to those who have sore need of him. I notice that you have barred the doors.”
“Ay, they’re barred. Nobody can win in the nicht.”
“Nobody will want in, Jean,” Margaret said, smiling.
“I dinna ken about that,” answered Jean below her breath. “Ay, ma’am, may you sleep for baith o’ us this nicht, for I daurna gang to my bed.”
Jean was both right and wrong, for two persons wanted in within the next half-hour, and she opened the door to both of them. The first to come was Babbie.
So long as women sit up of nights listening for a footstep, will they flatten their faces at the window, though all without be black. Jean had not been back 334 in the kitchen for two minutes before she raised the blind. Her eyes were close to the glass, when she saw another face almost meet hers, as you may touch your reflection in a mirror. But this face was not her own. It was white and sad. Jean suppressed a cry, and let the blind fall, as if shutting the lid on some uncanny thing.