“I heard ye were down at the Manse one day that I was away. It’s seldom, seldom I am from home, and at that hour above all. But I had to see some new folk at the Mill, and it was a good thing I went, for there has not been an open day since then. And I heard ye had a visitor with you, Lily.”
Lily’s heart seemed to stand still, but she made a great effort and mastered herself. “Yes,” she said, “it was Mr. Lumsden [many married persons call their husbands Mr. So-and-So] that had come in quite suddenly with the guisards on the last night of the year.”
“I understand,” said Helen, with a smile; “he wanted—and I cannot blame him—to be your first foot.”
The first person who comes into a house in the New Year is called the first foot in Scotland, and there are rules of good luck and bad dependent upon who that is.
“It might be so,” said Lily dreamily, “and I think he was, if that was what he wanted; but the kitchen was full of dancing and singing, the guisards making a great noise, as it was Hogmanay night.”
“That was to be expected,” said Helen, “and I am glad you had a man, and a young man, and a weel-wisher, or I am sore mistaken, for your first foot. It brings luck to the New Year.”
A “weel-wisher” means a lover in Scotland, just as in Italy a girl will say, Mi vuol bene, when she means to say that some one loves her.
“He was here after, twice or thrice, and he wanted to thank the minister for all his kindness, and as I was at the market with Beenie and Katrin, and he had offered to drive the pony, I went too. I thought I would have seen you, but you were not there.”
“Oh, how sorry I was, Lily! but a sight of the market would aye be something. It’s not like your grand ploys in Edinburgh, but it’s diverting too.”
“Oh, yes,” said Lily, with great gravity, “it is diverting too.”