Though I took oath on this melancholy business like the rest, there was one occasion, but a day or two after, that I almost broke my pledged word, and that to the lady who disturbed my Sunday worship and gave me so much reflection on the hunting-road. Her father, as I have said, came up often on a Saturday and supped his curds-and-cream and grew cheery over a Dutch bottle with my father, and one day, as luck had it, Betty honoured our poor doorstep. She came so far, perhaps, because our men and women were at work on the field I mention, whose second crop of grass they were airing for the winter byres—a custom brought to the glen from foreign parts, and with much to recommend it.
I had such a trepidation at her presence that I had almost fled on some poor excuse to the hill; but the Provost, who perhaps had made sundry calls in the bye-going at houses farther down the glen, and was in a mellow humour, jerked a finger over his shoulder towards the girl as she stood hesitating in the hall after a few words with my father and me, and said, “I’ve brought you a good harvester here, Colin, and she’ll give you a day’s darg for a kiss.”
I stammered a stupid comment that the wage would be well earned on so warm a day, and could have choked, the next moment, at my rusticity.
Mistress Betty coloured and bit her lip.
“Look at the hussy!” said her father again, laughing with heaving shoulders. “‘Where shall we go to-day on our rounds?’ said I; ‘Where but to Elrigmore,’ said she; ‘I have not seen Colin for an age!’ Yet I’ll warrant you thought the cunning jade shy of a gentleman soldier! Ah, those kirtles, those kirtles! I’ll give you a word of wisdom, sir, you never learned in Glascow Hie Street nor in the army.”
I looked helplessly after the girl, who had fled, incontinent, to the women at work in the field.
“Well, sir,” I said, “I shall be pleased to hear it. If it has any pertinence to the harvesting of a second crop it would be welcome.”
My father sighed. He never entered very heartily into diversion nowadays—small wonder!—so the Provost laughed on with his counsel.
“You know very well it has nothing to do with harvesting nor harrowing,” he cried; “I said kirtles, didn’t I! And you needn’t be so coy about the matter; surely to God you never learned modesty at your trade of sacking towns. Many a wench——”
“About this counsel,” I put in; “I have no trick or tale of wenchcraft beyond the most innocent. And beside, sir, I think we were just talking of a lady who is your daughter.”