'Yes, yes, Betty; but I mean I'm waiting for a particular young lady.'
'Oh, I see! Then ye ken o' yin?'
'Well, yes'——
'An' ye're waitin' on her growin' up, watchin' her as ye wad watch a Newton pippin ripenin'?'
'No, no! Betty, you misunderstand me. I know of a young lady; but—well, the truth is, I haven't met her yet—at least not in the flesh. Now, now, Betty, don't laugh at me till I explain.'
'Oh, Maister Weelum! I'll no' laugh. It strikes me it's mair a matter o' greetin'. But never mind; ca' your gird.'
'Well, Betty, to make a long story short, a few years ago I had a dream, and in that dream I saw a face and heard a voice—a woman's face and a woman's voice. I was very much impressed at the time, and that face has haunted me ever since. Among my friends I am not considered, in the generally accepted sense of the term, a woman's man. Strenuous work, facing hard matter-of-fact events, glimpses into the matrimonial tragedies of not a few lives, and the toll in time and thought which a growing business exacts have to an extent blighted the growth of the sentimentality which usually creeps into a man's heart between twenty and thirty. Somehow I have allowed matters to drift—to shape their own ends, or, as you would say, to work out their own salvation—in the full assurance, however, and with the hope strong within me, that some day the lady of my dream will come into my life, that I will again see that face and hear that voice. So far I have waited in vain; but I am not discouraged, for I feel my fate lies in my dream, and, as I say, I am waiting still.'
Betty resumed her knitting, for her needles had been idle while I was speaking.
'Imphm!' she said at length; 'an' that's hoo the land lies! Fancy that noo, a great, big, wiselike man like you hankerin' after the face o' a woman ye had seen when ye were sleepin', an' a' the time withoot a doot lettin' chances slip by ye o' catchin' what ye micht ha'e gruppit. Hoots! hoots! Maister Weelum, that's surely a senseless ploy. Mair than that, I've nae brew o' dreams, although I confess that there's much in Scripture hinges on them. They were the makin' o' Joseph, a loupin'-on-stane to Daniel, an' a godsend to the prophets on mair than ae occasion. There's nae gettin' away frae it; but for a' that, as I say, I've nae brew o' them. I mind aince o' dreamin' that I was sittin' doon to my tea, an' that I was eatin' the best bit o' boiled ham that ever I tasted in a' my life; an' the next mornin'—the very next mornin', Maister Weelum—my soo dee'd. Anither time—it was on a Setterday nicht, I mind—I dreamed that the kitchen lum was on fire; an' on the Sunday mornin', when I keekit up to see that it was a' richt, a young doo tummelt doon an' nearly frichtened the life oot o' me. An' there was Peggy Rae—Mrs Wallace, ye ken—a real nice, God-fearin' woman she is, an' a regular attender o' the prayer meetin's—weel, three times in ae nicht she dreamed that an auld auntie o' hers had come hame frae Ameriky an' gi'en her the present o' three hunner pounds; an' what think ye, Maister Weelum, she wasna weel through wi' her breakfast when her mither-in-law—an auld, Godless, totterin' heathen she was—was brocht to her door in a cairt, took to her bed in Peggy's wee back-room, an' was the plague o' her life for weel on for a dizzen years. Na, na, Maister Weelum; dreams are queer, contrary, unchancy things to sweer by. Tak' my advice, forget a' aboot your dream-leddy, as ye ca' her; cast your e'e aboot on what ye can see an' grup, an', losh me! a faceable-lookin' man like you needna grapple lang. But I'm daft, sittin' clatterin' here an' the tatties at the sypein'. Tak' tent o' what I say, though, Maister Weelum, for ye're nearin' that time o' life when an unmarried man stammers into a rut that he's no' easy got oot o'.'
Betty's warning gave me food for reflection for long after she left me—so much so, indeed, that as I quietly strolled along the Cundy road an hour or two afterwards, in the early afternoon, every chaffinch sang not to me but at me, and the burden of his song seemed to be, 'Tak' tent, tak' tent, and mind, do mind, the rut, rut, rut.'