‘I think you’re wrong about the kink-cough,’ said Miss Catherine. ‘There’s one of Peter Chalmers’s boys——’
‘He’s had that cough as long as I can mind,’ said Jean. ‘Na, na, my bonnie woman, dinna you be feared; there’s naething catching in the parish but I’m sure to hear of it. Put down the bairn, and let her sleep.’
‘Well, I am of a different opinion,’ said Miss Catherine; ‘and I’m wearying for a change. I’ll take my maid, Marion, who is very experienced about bairns, and we’ll start in the morning to-morrow with the boat. I cannot stay, Isabel, my dear. Keep up a good heart, and the fine air yonder will make you look like two roses, the baby and you.—— Lord preserve us, woman!’ said Miss Catherine, turning round upon Jean, to whom she had made a sign to follow her, as soon as they were outside the door, ‘could ye not see I had a reason? and was making you signs enough to rouse a whole parish—if she had not been so taken up with the bairn.’
‘Me!—how could I tell?’ said Jean, surprised; ‘and I couldna find it in my heart to put her in such trouble, and it no true.’
‘Nonsense about putting her in trouble!’ said Miss Catherine, energetically. ‘Perhaps you would like better to wring her heart, and bring in another man to her, and turn all her peace to distress once more.’
‘What man?’ asked Jean, seizing with instant penetration the point at question.
‘Yon English lad!’
‘Eh, me!’ said Jean Campbell, ‘blessings on you for a quick thought, and a quicker act. I heard he had been seen over the hill. I’ll swear it’s the kink-cough!’ she added, under her breath; and so the bargain was made.
It was the first night of pain Isabel had spent since her baby was born. It seemed to her as if she ought to get up and fly away with her through the darkness, to escape from so terrible a danger; and she went back a hundred times to the cradle after the little Margaret had been disposed of for the night to listen to her breathing, and look at her little rosebud face, and touch her tiny fingers, and make sure she had not caught anything.
‘The bairn’s as well as ever she was in her life,’ Jean said at last, with a little impatience, as this process went on.