“Me! What did it matter if it was me or you or a fishwife,” said Lily, “when a man is in such dreadful pain?”
They discussed it over and over again from every point of view, until Lily fell asleep from sheer weariness in the hundredth repetition of the story. Beenie, for her part, was exceedingly discreet at supper that evening. Indeed, she was altogether too discreet to be successful with a quick observer like Katrin, who saw, by the extreme precautions of her friend, and the close-shut lips with which Beenie minced and bridled, and made little remarks about nothing in particular, that there was something to conceal. Katrin was very near to penetrating the mystery even now, but she said nothing except those somewhat ostentatious congratulations to all parties on the fact that Miss Eelen was there, which were designed to show the growing conviction that Miss Eelen was not there at all. Beenie was quite quick enough to perceive this, but she exercised much control over herself, and made no signs before Dougal. He was chiefly occupied by the address to Rory which Lily had made, which struck him as an excellent joke, and which he repeated to himself from time to time, with a laugh which came from the depths of his being. “She said till him: ‘Ye can throw me the morn, and welcome, if ye’ll go canny the day.’ Losh, what a spirit she has, that lassie, and the fun in her! ‘Go canny the day, and ye can throw me, if ye like, the morn.’ And Rory to take it a’ in like a Christian!” He laughed till he held his sides, and then he said feebly: “It’ll be the death of me.”
The joke did not strike the women as so brilliant. “I hope he’ll no take her at her word,” said Beenie.
“Na, na, he’ll no take her at her word: he’s ower much of a gentleman; but if he does, you’ll see she’ll stand it and never a word in her head. That’s what I call real spirit, feared at nothing. ‘Go canny the day, and you can throw me, if you like, the morn.’ I think I never heard any thing so funny in a’ my born days.”
“You’re easy pleased,” said his wife, though she was quite inclined to consider Lily’s speeches as brilliant, and herself as the flower of human kind, but to let a man suppose that he was the discoverer of all this was not to be thought of. She communicated, however, some of her suspicions to Dougal, for want of any other confidant, when they were alone in the stillness of their chamber. “I have my doubts,” said Katrin, “that it was nae surprise to her at a’ to find the gentleman, and that it was him that was the Miss Eelen that met her at the auld brig.”
“Him that was Miss Eelen? And how could he be Miss Eelen, a muckle man?” said Dougal.
“Oh, ye gowk!” said his wife, and she put back her discoveries into her bosom, and said no more.
Lily was very restless next day until she was able to get away on her charitable mission. “I must go now,” she said, “to help to take care of him, or Helen will have no time for her other business, and she has so much to do.”
“You maun take care and no find another gentleman with a broken foot,” said Katrin; “you mightn’t be able to manage Rory so well a second time.”
“Oh, I am not afraid of Rory,” the girl cried. “I just speak to him, as Dougal does, in his ear.”