Mary was all the while eagerly listening at the door, which was not quite closed, and as she heard those words and the low cry from her "mother" beseeching the minister to pray, she ran out, and falling down before him, with muffled sobs hid her face in the folds of his great-coat, and said, "Oh, minister, dinna let faither dee! dinna let him dee!" And she clasped and clapped the knees of him who she thought had mysterious power with God.
The minister lifted up the agonised child, patted her fondly on the head, and then gazed on her thin but sweet face. She was pale from her self-denying labours in the sick room.
"Ye maun excuse the bairn," said Katie, "for she haesna been oot o' the hoose except for an errand sin' Adam grew ill. I canna get her tae sleep or eat as she used to do--she's sae fond o' the guidman. I'm awfu' behadden till her. Come here, my wee wifie." And Katie pressed the child's head and tearful face to her bosom, where Mary's sobs were smothered in a large brown shawl. "She's no' strong, but extraordinar' speerity," continued Katie in a low voice and apologetically to Mr. Porteous; "and ye maun just excuse us baith."
"I think," said the minister, in a tremulous voice, "it would be good for us all to engage in prayer."
They did so.
Just as they rose from their knees, the slight noise which the movement occasioned--for hitherto the conversation had been conducted in whispers--caused the starling to leap up on his perch. Then with clear accents, that rung over the silent house, he said, "I'm Charlie's bairn!"
Katie looked up to the cage, and for the first time in her life felt something akin to downright anger at the bird. His words seemed to her to be a most unseasonable interruption--a text for a dispute--a reminiscence of what she did not wish then to have recalled.
"Whisht, ye impudent cratur!" she exclaimed; adding, as if to correct his rudeness, "ye'll disturb yer maister."
The bird looked down at her with his head askance, and scratched it as if puzzled and asking "What's wrong?"
"Oh," said Katie, turning to the minister as if caught in some delinquency, "it's no' my faut, sir; ye maun forgie the bird; the silly thing doesna ken better."