'No, mem. Gin it bena just the way o' the world. "Them 'at gets, forgets." It's an auld sayin', and it looks as gin it was a true ane. An' they're a' that gleg, to tak up ilka daftlike clash 'at ony donnart haverel may set rinnin'. Whan a man has gaed out an' in amang them, an' gien them his strength an' his gear sae free, they micht think shame.' Here she stopped abruptly and in some confusion, as one whose tongue had outrun her discretion. She caught the look of bewildered surprise in Mary's face. 'But I'm thinkin' my ain tongue's rinnin' awa wi' me. I'm just clean angered wi' the doited gomerels.'
'I don't understand you, Eppie. There must be something going on we don't know about. What is it?'
'Hoot, mem, there's just naething ava! But I'm thinkin' ye'll better gae ben, the minister's steerin!'
Mary returned to her brother's bedside, but he told her he had not called. She took one of his books and strove to interest him by reading aloud, while she ran over in her mind all that had occurred in the neighbourhood for weeks past, and how it could in any way bear on their relations with the people. Roderick grew drowsy in time under the monotony of her voice, and she herself would shortly have fallen asleep, when the click of the latch was heard.
Both were awake in a moment, and starting round, beheld Kenneth Drysdale standing in the doorway.
'Is any body in?' he exclaimed, as he stepped into the room with a laugh. 'I have knocked three times and got no answer. You must both have been asleep. Ah! I see. A good book! That is just like my mother's reading on a Sunday afternoon. Good books give such peace of mind and repose of conscience, that the body shares in it too. One is sure to find her extended on her sofa any time between luncheon and the dressing bell. 'Meditating with her eyes closed,' she calls it; but from the regularity of her breathing, I would venture to call it by another name. Julia, now, reads French novels, and you won't catch her napping. Roderick, old man! Laid up?'
Roderick took his old friend's hand in both his own. It was a great and unexpected pleasure to see him. The stand he had taken on the Church question appeared to have severed him altogether from the family at Inchbracken, and it was by no means the least of the sacrifices he had felt bound to make for the truth. He had heard of Mary's visit to Inchbracken before taking to his bed at Gortonside, but since then his own physical pains, and the misery in his mind about Sophia's being about to marry the Manchester man, had so possessed him, that he had not spoken to her on the subject. If he had, he would have been less surprised at Kenneth's appearance; that is to say, if she had or could have explained; for in converse where looks and tones of the voice go so far to modify and even replace spoken language, it may be doubted whether she would have found anything she could have reported. She understood, and Kenneth understood, and each knew that the other understood; and yet what was there after all to tell? Until you found it necessary to make a disclosure to your mamma, dear Madam, and the gentleman now your husband made a formal statement to your papa,--pray what could you have said in your own case? And would it not have been impossible for you to say anything at an earlier period to enlighten your elders and save them from afterwards moralizing on the remarkable secrecy and cleverness of the young people in managing their tender affairs? A good deal of the same sort of thing passed on the present occasion. Kenneth talked mostly to Roderick, and both were happy to renew the old friendship. Mary sat by perfectly content. The portion of the conversation that fell to her share was not large, but there were looks and softenings of the voice, quiet smiles and comings and goings of a flush, that supplied all she waited to hear or desired to say.
Roderick felt refreshed by the visit, and when Kenneth, promising to come again very shortly, at last withdrew, the burden of living appeared lighter to him, and he lay back armed with new fortitude to bear and wait.
Kenneth had been gone but a few minutes when Eppie Ness in her turn had a visitor--an old woman, toothless and bent, limping on a staff, and with a covered basket on her arm. A grizzled elf-lock or two had escaped from the white sowback mutch which was bound to her head by a winding of broad black ribbon, and hung down over the glittering beadlike eyes. A hook nose and projecting chin nearly met in a bird-like beak over the fallen-in mouth, whence one surviving fang protruded with a grim witch-like effect. Her dress was dark blue linsey, and over it she wore, as on all occasions of ceremony, the scarlet cloak in which she had been 'kirket' as a bride fifty years before, and had worn unfailingly ever since, summer and winter, to kirk and market. It was Luckie Howden. She pushed open the door without ceremony, and stood in the middle of the kitchen looking about her. Eppie, with the child in her lap, sat by the fire and was crooning some old song in the endeavour to make it sleep.
'Hear til her noo! wi' her daft sinfu' sangs. Wraxin' the thrapple o' her like some screighin' auld craw! "Like draws to like," folk says, an' aiblins ye're no that faur wrang, gude wife, to be skirlin' the like til a merry-begotten wee din raiser, as that wein's like to turn out. But wadna "Bangor," noo, or "Saunt Neot's," or some douce tune like that, an' belike ane o' the waesome Psaulms o' penitence be fitter baith for the puir bairn an' its ill-doin' faither?'