“To bring in Miss Eelen’s name, puir thing, puir thing, that has nothing to do with such vanities, just to give ye a countenance and be a screen to you, and you going to meet your lad, and no leddy near ye at a’.”
“Don’t speak so loud!” cried Lily with an affectation of alarm; and then she added: “I never said Helen was coming; I only——”
“Put it so that Katrin thought that was what you meant. Oh, I ken fine! It’s no a falsehood, you say, but it’s a falsehood you put into folk’s heads. And, ’deed, Katrin was a great fool to take heed for a moment of what you said, when it was just written plain in your eyes and every line of your countenance, and the very gown on your back, that you had come from a meeting with your lad!”
“I wish you would not use such common words, Beenie! as if I were the house-maid meeting my lad!”
“I fail to see where the difference lies,” said Beenie with dignity; “the thing’s just the same. You’re maybe no running the risks a poor lass runs, that has naebody to take care of her. But this is no more than the second time he’s come, and lo! there’s a wall of lees rising round your feet already, trippin’ ye up at every step. What will ye say to Katrin, Miss Lily, the morn’s night when ye come hame? Will ye keep it up and pretend till her that Miss Eelen’s met ye at the auld brig? or will ye invent some waur story to account for her no coming? or what, I ask ye, will ye do?”
“Katrin,” said Lily, with burning cheeks, but a haughty elevation of the head, “has no right to cross-question me.”
“Nor me either, Miss Lily, ye will be thinking?”
“It does not matter what I’m thinking. She is one thing and you are another. I have told you—— Oh, Beenie, Beenie,” cried the girl suddenly, “why do you begin to make objections so soon? What am I doing more than other girls do? Who is it I am deceiving? Nobody! Uncle Robert wanted to make me promise I would give him up, but I would not promise. I never said I would not see him and speak to him and make him welcome if he came to me; there was never a word of that between us. And as for Katrin!” cried Lily with scorn. “Why, Grace Scott met Robbie Burns out at Duddingston, and told her mother she had only been walking with her cousin, and you just laughed when you told me. And her mother! very different, very different from Katrin. You said what an ill lassie! but you laughed and you said Mrs. Scott was wrong to force them to it. That was all the remark you made, Robina, my dear woman,” said Lily, recovering her spirit; “so I am not going to put up with any criticism from you.”
“Oh, Miss Lily!” Robina said. But what could she add to this mild remonstrance, having thus been convicted of a sympathy with the vagaries of lovers which she did not, indeed, deny? And it cannot be said that poor Lily’s suggested falsehood did much harm. Katrin, for her part, had very little faith in Miss Eelen as the companion of the young lady’s ramble. She too shook her head as she packed her basket. “I see now,” she said, “the meaning o’t, which is aye a satisfaction. It’s some fine lad that hasna siller enough to please Sir Robert. And he’s come after her, and they’re counting on a wheen walks and cracks together, poor young things. Maybe if she had had a mother it would have been different, or if poor Mr. James had lived, poor man, to take care of his ain bit bairn. Sir Robert’s a dour auld carl; he’s not one I would put such a charge upon. What does he ken about a young leddy’s heart, poor thing? But they shall have a good lunch whatever,” the good woman said.
And when the sun was high over the moor and every thing shining, not too hot nor too bright, the tempered and still-breathing noon of the North, Lily set out upon her pony with the basket by her saddle, and all the world smiling and inviting before her. Never had such a daring and delightful holiday dawned upon her before. Almost a whole day to spend together, Ronald all that she dreamed, and not an inquisitive or unkindly eye to look upon them, not even Beenie to disturb their absorption in each other. She waved her whip in salutation to the others behind as they stood watching her set out. “A bonnie day to ye, Miss Lily,” cried Katrin. “And you’ll no be late?” said anxious Beenie. “’Od,” cried Dougal, with his cap on his ear, “I wish I had just put off thae potataies and gone with her mysel’——” “Ye fuil!” said his wife, and said no further word. And Lily rode away in heavenly content and expectation over the moor.