“He’ll be grown so big we will not know him, Beenie, and he will not know his mother; that woman Margaret that took him away will have all his smiles—she will be the first face that he sees, now that he’s old enough to notice. Oh, my little bairn! my little bairn!”
“A bairn that is two months auld takes but little notice, mem,” said Beenie, strong in her practical knowledge. “You need not fash your head about that. They may smile, but if ye were to ask me the very truth, I wouldna hide from you that what they ca’ smiling is just in my opinion the——”
“If you say that word, I will kill you!” cried Lily. She laughed and then she cried in her excitement. “How will I contain myself? how will I keep quiet and face the world, and the folk in the world, and every-body about, till the moment comes—oh, the moment, Beenie!—when I will get my baby into my arms?”
“Eh, mem! but you must not make yoursel’ sae awfu’ sure about that,” said Beenie. “We might not find them just at first—or he might have a little touch of the cauld, or maybe the thrush in his wee mouth, or measles, or something. You must not make yourself so awfu’ sure.”
“He is ill!” cried Lily, seizing her in a fierce grip. “He is ill, oh, you false, false woman, and you have never said a word to me!”
“There is naething ill about him; he is just thriving like the flowers. But I canna bide when folk are so terrible sure. It seems as if you were tempting God.”
“It’s you that are tempting me—to believe in nothing, neither Him nor women’s word. But what would make a woman deceive a baby’s mother about her own child? A man might do it, that knows nothing about what that means; but a woman never would do it, Beenie—a woman that has been about little babies and their mothers all her days?”
“No, mem, I never thought it,” said Beenie in dutiful response.
At the coach, where they were received with all the greater honor on account of Sir Robert’s brougham, and the beautiful prancing horses, Helen Blythe met them. “They would not let me come to see you,” she said. “It’s long, long, since I’ve seen you, Lily, and worn and white you’ve grown—but just as bonnie as ever: there comes up the color just as it used to do—but you must look stronger when you come back.”
“I am going away for that,” Lily said.