“That may be. But something must ail a young lass like yon when she is sae slow to open her lips, and goes by a body—even a young lad, as gin there was naebody there.”
“That’s her loss,” said the weaver with a laugh.
That she went about “without heeding” was a more serious matter in the case of the new lass than might at first be supposed. If she had not lived at the manse, which was so much frequented by all sorts of people, or if she had been plain, or crooked, or even little, it would have mattered less that she was so preoccupied and so difficult to approach.
Fewer people, in that case, might have noticed her. As it was, many eyes were on her when she went down the street with her water-buckets, or sat in the kirk in a dream. She would have been called a beautiful woman anywhere. In the street of this dull little town, where men had eyes as well as in larger places, it was not surprising that she should be watched and wondered at.
Her face was beautiful, but it wanted the colour and brightness which made “a bonny face” to the eyes of most of the folk of Nethermuir. It was thin and sallow when she first came there, and the gloom upon it, and “the dazed look” which came when she was suddenly spoken to, did much to mar and shadow its beauty. And so did the great mutch, with its double “set-up” border of thick muslin, which was tied close around it, covering the ears, and the round throat, and hiding all the beautiful hair, which after the fever was beginning to grow again. But nothing could disguise the firm, erect form, which might have been thought too tall, perhaps, if it had not been round and full in proportion; and the short gown confined at the waist by the long strings of her apron, and the rather scant petticoat of dark winsey that fell beneath it, are not such unbecoming garments as might be supposed by those accustomed to garments of a more elaborate fashion.
Her strength was quite as highly appreciated by the stooping weavers and shoemakers of Nethermuir as was her beauty, and the evidences which she unconsciously gave of it were much admired and often recounted among them. When “Auld Maggie” fell on the slide which the town laddies had made in the street, and tailor Coats ran to get some one to help to carry her home, “the minister’s lass” lifted her in her arms, and had her in her bed with a hot-water bottle at her feet before he came back again. And while every other woman in the street needed to take at least one rest, at a neighbour’s door, between the pump and her own, “the minister’s lass,” turning neither head nor eye, moved on without a pause, till she disappeared round the close that led to her kitchen-door.
“And, for that matter, except for the way her face is turned, ye wud never ken whether her buckets were fou or toom” (full or empty), said an admiring observer, as he watched her steady and rapid steps along the street.
So poor Allison, for one reason and another, could not be overlooked. Her name—or rather the name which her place gave her—“the minister’s lass,” was on many lips for a time. Absolutely nothing was known about her except what the kindly and guarded letter of Dr Fleming had conveyed; yet much was supposed and said concerning her, and some things were repeated till they were believed, which she might have resented had she heard of them. They might have angered her, and so have helped to shake her out of the heaviness and dulness that had fallen upon her. But she “never heeded.” She saw neither the hand which was held out to her in friendliness nor the face that turned away in indifference or anger.
And perhaps, on the whole, it was as well that she heeded nothing. For as weeks and months passed on, and other folk came or went, and new events—which would have hardly deserved the name elsewhere—happened to give subject-matter for discussion at proper times and places, Allison became just “the minister’s lass,” tolerated, if not altogether approved, among the censors of morals and manners in the town, and she still went her way, for the most part, unconscious of them all.