“Eh, Miss Lily,” said Beenie in the same tone, “I’m no wanting to be better than you. If ye tell a lee, and it’s but an innocent lee, I’ll tell one too. If you’re punished for it, what am I that I shouldna take my share with my mistress? But about the spraining o’ the ankle, my bonnie dear: that’s a’ true?”
Lily answered with a laugh to the sudden doubt in Robina’s eyes. She was very much excited, too much so to feel how tired she was, and capable of nothing without either laughter or tears. “Oh, yes, it’s quite true; and, oh, Beenie, he is badly hurt and suffering a great deal of pain. Poor Ronald! But he will be safe in Helen’s hands. If he were only out of pain! Perhaps it is a good thing, Beenie. That is what he whispered when I came away. Oh, how hard it was to come away and leave him there ill, and his foot so bad! but I am to go down to-morrow, and it will be a duty to stay as long as I can to cheer him up and to save Helen trouble, who has so many other things to do. I am not hard-hearted; but he says himself, if he were only out of pain, perhaps it’s a good thing.”
Here Lily stopped and cried, and murmured among her tears: “If it had only been me! It’s easier for a girl to bear pain than a man.”
“But if it had been you, Miss Lily, it would have been no advantage. You can go to him at the Manse, but he could not have come to you here.”
“That is true,” cried Lily, laughing; “you are a clever Beenie to think of that. But how am I to live till to-morrow, all the long night through, and all the morning without news?”
“A young gentleman doesna die of a sprained ankle,” said Beenie sedately, “and if you are a good bairn, and will go early to bed, and take care of yourself, I’ll see that the boy goes into the toun the first thing in the morning to hear how he is.”
“You are a kind Beenie,” cried Lily, clasping her arms about her maid’s neck. But it was a long time before Robina succeeded in quieting the girl’s excitement. She had to hear the story again half-a-dozen times over, now in its full reality, now in the form which it had to bear for the outside world, with all the tears and laughter which accompanied it. “And he grew so white, so white, I thought he was going to faint,” said Lily, herself growing pale.
“I’m thankful ye were spared that. It is very distressing to see a person faint, Miss Lily.”
“And then he cheered up and gave a grin in the middle of his pain: I will not call it a smile, for it was no more than a grin, half fun and half torture. Poor Ronald! oh, my poor lad, my poor lad!”
“He was a lucky lad to get you to do all that for him, Miss Lily.”