"It's me, my lamb. It's me, your Meg!"
And Meg's cheek was pressed against that of Winsome, moist with sleep. The sleeper stirred with a dovelike moaning, and opened her eyes, dark with sleep and wet with the tears of dreams, upon Meg.
"Waken, my bonnie; Meg has something that she maun tell ye."
So Winsome looked round with the wild fear with which she now started from all her sleeps; but the strong arms of her loyal Meg were about her, and she only smiled with a vague wistfulness, and said:
"It's you, Meg, my dear!"
So into her ear Meg whispered her tale. As she went on, Winsome clasped her round the neck, and thrust her face into the neck of Meg's drugget gown. This is the same girl who had set the ploughmen their work and appointed to each worker about the farm her task. It seems necessary to say so.
"Noo," said Meg, when she had finished, "ye ken whether ye want to see him or no!"
"Meg," whispered Winsome, "can I let him go away to Edinburgh and maybe never see me again, without a word?"
"Ye ken that best yersel'," said Meg with high impartiality, but with her comforting arms very close about her darling.
"I think," said Winsome, the tears very near the lids of her eyes, "that I had better not see him. I—I do not wish to see him—Meg," she said earnestly; "go and tell him not to see me any more, and not to think of a girl like me—"