Then, as was my duty, I rebuked her for looking to man for that which could alone come from the Master and Maker of man.
She listened very demurely, with her eyes upon the silver buckles of her shoon, which she had admiringly placed side by side on the grass, when she set herself down on the low boundary wall of the kirkyard.
“I ken I am too young and light and foolish to be fit company even for a young minister,” she said, and there was a blush upon her cheek which vexed me, though it was bonny enough to look upon.
“Nay,” answered I quickly; “there you mistake me. I meant no such thing, bonnie lass. We are all both fond and foolish, minister and maid.” (Well might I say it, for—God forgive me!—at that very moment my mind ran more on how the lass looked and on the way she had of tapping the grass with her foot than on the solemn work of the day.)
“No, no,” she interrupted, hastily; “I am but a silly lass, poor and ignorant, and you do well to fault me.”
Now this put me in a painful predicament, for I still held in my hand the solitary scraplet left of the young lass’s “piece,” and I must needs, like a dull, splenetic fool, go on fretting her for a harmless word.
She turned away her head a little; nevertheless, I was not so ill-learned in the ways of maids but that I could see she was crying.
“What is your name, sweet maid?” I asked, for my heart was wae that I had grieved her.
She did not answer me till she had a little recovered herself.
“Jean Gemmell,” she said, at last, “and my father is the tenant of Drumglass up by there. He is an elder, and will be here by kirk-time. The session is holding a meeting at the Manse.”