My eyes were on her face, and I saw the colour mount beneath her healthy brown as she smiled. I felt I would have given all of life that might lie before me had that smile been for me. With ears alert I waited to hear her speak. Softly, and in sweet accents, within whose music there was a note of roguery, she answered:
"If the wee ravens didna grow up, wha would bring food to Elijah?"
The minister laughed. "It was a fine cheese, Mary, and your oatcakes couldna be bettered in the shire. What say you, young man?" he said, turning to me.
The moment I had dreamed of had come, and the eyes of the girl were turned expectantly upon me, and then, fool that I was, any readiness of wit I had, oozed through the soles of my feet and left me standing in the adorable presence, an inarticulate dolt. I mumbled I know not what, but she laughed my confusion aside.
"If there are twa mouths to fill," she said, "the ravens will ha'e to fly into the wilderness a wee oftener. I maun tell mither."
She looked at me, and then with a glint in her beautiful eyes that made me think she had not been altogether unaware of my scrutiny during the service, said: "For a trooper, ye behaved very weel," and then lest I might imagine that I was more to her than the merest insect that hides among the heather, she turned once more to the minister.
I was too young then to know that, be she Covenanter's daughter or Court lady, woman is ever the same, with the same arts to provoke, the same witchery to allure, the same artfully artless skill to torture and to heal the heart of man. She had turned away from me, but in doing so she had drawn me closer to herself, and I was rivetted to the ground where I stood, ready to stand there for ever--just to be within sound of her voice, within arm's length of her hand. Suddenly she disentangled herself from the little group and going to its outskirts placed her hand upon the arm of a middle-aged bearded man and brought him to the minister. There was something in the shape of the forehead and eyebrows of the man that made me think he might be her father, and my thought was confirmed when the minister, taking him by the hand, said:
"Andrew, you have a daughter to be proud of. Her mither's ain bairn, and a bonnie lass."
Her father paid no attention to the compliment, and as though to bring back the thoughts of the man of God from such a worldly object as a pretty girl, said:
"And when may we expect ye tae honour our hoose by comin' for the catechisin'?"