I was mazed and confounded before her, but could not answer a word, for the thing was as true as if she had read my heart. Where had the young lass so learned the ways of men?
'Forgotten your kisses, Launce?' she went on. 'And what of them? I count kisses but as the X's and O's that bairns make on the flags with soft cam stone—gone when the game is over.'
'The home-coming from the fair at Maybole and the kisses that you and I then kissed,' said I, bitterly, 'were these X's or O's? I rede ye tell me!'
'Launce,' said Kate Allison, 'we dreamed a pleasant dream, you and I. We have awaked. It is a new day. We wash the night fantasies off our faces, and are ready to meet the morning with the sunshine in our eyes. Together we have sipped the cream. It is time to drink the milk. We have gathered the flowers—let us look to the fruit.'
'Kate,' said I, more kindly, 'when did you think all these things?'
For the lassie made me marvel with the aptness of her speech, and ashamed with her plain saying of things that I had hardly named within myself.
'Ah,' she said gently and wisely, 'the thoughts of a lass when a lad comes courting her, are more than she tells with her mouth. For many a kiss is honey-sweet on the lips, but bitter as gall in the heart. Yet so has it not been with yours and mine. We loved and we part, even as the way-gaun of the wind that kissed the apple blossom in the spring when the year was young and glad.'
She made to rise from her seat.
'I must go,' she said.
'To go meet Robert Harburgh and to kiss him. I thought I knew his whistle!' said I, with my heart raging angry and disconsolate in spite of her fine words, which I could not answer.