"I should have thought," I said, "that Mary's voice would persuade the milk from the most reluctant cow."
"I dinna' ken aboot that," she answered: "She's no as guid a milker as her mother, and though my voice is timmer noo I'll guarantee to get mair milk at a milkin' than ever Mary'll fetch ben the hoose."
I would fain have continued the conversation, but the baking was over, and the good woman left to join her daughter. Mary still sang on and I sat in rapture, my heart aglow.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE WISDOM OF A WOMAN
I saw no more of Mary that day, for ere the milking was over Andrew returned from the fields and after studying me for a moment said: "I think it's time for your bed." Whereat he helped me carefully up the ladder, and left me to disrobe myself. That night, when the moon came out and filled my room with a glory that was not of this earth, I lay and dreamed of Mary, and through the silence of my dream I could hear once again the witching notes of her song.
Day after day I was gently assisted down the ladder, and each day I spent a longer time sitting by the peat fire. Most often my only companion in the kitchen was the good wife, and between us an intimate understanding began to spring up. I felt she liked to have me sitting there, and more than once she would look wistfully at me, and I knew from the sigh with which she turned again to her work that she was thinking of her dead boy.
Her face was attractive, though time had chiselled it deeply--and her eyes were shrewd and kindly. In repose her features were overcast by a mask of solemnity, but at each angle of her mouth a dimple lurked, and a ready smile, which started there or in her eyes, was perpetually chasing away all the sterner lines.
Mary came and went, busy at times on duties about the steading, sometimes on duties further afield, and more than once she set off laden with a well-filled basket and I knew that she was taking succour to some fugitive hill-man hidden on the moors. Always she treated me with kindness--with those innumerable and inexpressible little kindnesses that mean nothing to most people, but which to one in love are as drops of nectar on a parched tongue. Sometimes she would bring me flowers which she had gathered on the moor; and proud I was when on a day she fastened a sprig of heather in my coat.
Sometimes of a night the dambrod was brought out and the old man would beat me soundly once again.