Then I remembered, and was shamed. However, Nell paid no heed, but seemed to be thinking of something else.
'Nor have you now any excuse for going down by to Sandy the Grieve's,' she said, giving me tit for tat.
'Nell,' said I, 'we are very good friends, are we not?
'Ay,' said she, drily, 'brawly do I ken the reason of that.'
'And what may the reason be?' I asked of her.
'Just that I am all there is left,' she said, so quickly that I declare the saying took the wind from me, like a sudden blow where one's breath bides. Nor do I yet know the answer to that, for on the surface of the thing there was certainly some reason in what she said.
'Oh, I am not proud,' she went on, 'and you and I are good friends and good company. I am e'en content to be Mistress Do-no-better!'
'Nell,' said I, going nearer to her, and taking her hand, 'Nell, you and I are now to be more than that.'
But she drew her hand away with a jerk.
'Try a new way of it,' she said; 'I am not taking Mistress Katherine Allison's cast-off sweet speeches!'