"And when he saw her sit by him, he drew away the hand that had been in mine and laid it on hers.
"'Lizzie,' he said, 'dinna greet, my bonnie: I promise! I will be your ain guid lad!'"
* * * * *
"And the lass?" I queried.
"Oh, she gaed back to the shop, and they say she has chairge o' a hale department noo, and is muckle thocht on. But she has never mairried, and, though we hae askit her every year, she wad never come back to Drumquhat again!"
"And that," said my mother, smiling through her tears, "is the story how my Willie was led astray by the Lass in the Shop."
THE RESPECT OF DROWDLE
Most folk in the West of Scotland know the parish of Drowdle, at least by repute. It is a great mining centre, and the inhabitants are not counted among the peaceable of the earth.
"If ye want your head broken, gang doon to Drowdle on a Saturday nicht" is an advice often given to the boastful or the bumptious. Drowdle is a new place too, and the inhabitants, instead of being, like ordinary Scottish Geordies, settled for generations in one coal-field and with whole streets of relatives within stonethrow, are composed of all the strags and restless ne'er-do-weels of such as go down into the earth, from Cornwall even to the Hill-o'-Beith.
Most, I say, know Drowdle by repute. I myself, indeed, once acted as locum tenens for the doctor there during six hot and lively summer weeks, and gained an experience in the treatment of contusions, discolorations, and abrasions of the skull and frontal bones which has been of the greatest possible use to me since. The younger Drowdleites, however, had at that time a habit of stretching a cord across the threshold about a foot above the step, which interfered considerably with professional dignity of exit—that is, till you were used to it. But after one has got into the habit of scouting ahead with a spatula ground fine and tied to a walking-stick on darkish nights, Drowdle began to respect you. Still better if (as I did) you can catch a couple of the cord-stretchers, produce an occipital contusion or two on your own account, and finish by kicking the jesters bodily into Drowdle Water. Then the long rows of slated brick which constitute the mining village agree that "the new doakter kens his business—a smart lad, yon! Heard ye what he did to thae twa deils, Jock Lee an' Cockly Nixon? He catchit them trippin' him wi' a cairt rape at Betty Forgan's door, and, faith, he threw them baith into Drowdle Water!"