'Oh laogh mo chridhe[9],' cried Cecil affectionately, 'it's good my part to venture any thing for your sake; and if it just please Providence to keep us till we be at Glen Eredine, I'll, may be, get another.'
I could not help smiling at Cecil's humble substitute for the care of Providence, and inwardly moralising upon the equal inefficacy of others which are in more common repute. But as a casual attempt to correct her superstition would have been more likely to shake her confidence in myself than in the elfin arrow, I quietly accepted of her gift; enquiring when she would be in a situation to replace it.
'I don't know, lady,' answered Cecil with a sigh. 'The weather's clear and bonny, and I am wearying sore for home; but—but I'm half feared that Jemmy might no be easy, ye see, when he heard that I was at Eredine.'
'How should it make your husband uneasy to hear that you were at home?'
'I don't know,' said Cecil, looking down with a faint smile, and stopped; then sighing deeply, she proceeded, relieving her embarrassment by twisting the string of her apron with great industry. 'Ye see, lady, I have a friend in Glen Eredine,—I—I—'
'So much the better, Cecil. That cannot surely be an objection to your going thither.'
'I mean,—I would say, a lad like that—I should have married, if it had been so ordered.' Cecil stopped, and sighed again.
'And do you think your husband would scruple to trust you, Cecil?' said I.
Her embarrassment instantly vanished, and she looked up steadily in my face. 'No, no, lady!' said she, 'I'll never think such a thought of him. He's no' so ill-hearted. But he would think that I might be dowie[10] there, and he so far away; for it's a sore heart to me, that the poor lad has never been rightly himsel', since my father bade marry Jemmy. And he'll no be forbidden to stand and look after me, and to make of little Kenneth there, and fetch hame our cows at night. And ever since my father died, he'll no be hindered to shear[11] my mother's peats, although I have never spoken one word to him, good or bad, since that day that——'
Cecil paused, and drew her sleeve across her eyes. 'It was so ordered,' said she, 'and all's for the best.'