The sounds of a struggle again commenced, mixed with Louise’s ejaculations:—“Now, now—dis vill do for you—une fois—vonce, twice, trice round—dat vill do—quite sufficient to kill de giant, or Sir Marmaduke himself. Now, my lady, I tink de ting is pretty vell done; I vill trow her into de hedge—dere—now, let us go.”
The two ladies went away, and Geordie rushed forward to the place where they had thrown the child. It was still convulsed. He loosened the necklace, which had been left by mistake, and blew strongly into the child’s mouth. He heard it sigh, and in a little time breathe; and, carrying it with the greatest care, he took it home with him to his mother’s house.
“Whar hae ye been, man, and what is this ye hae in your airms?” said Widow Willison to Geordie, when he went in.
“It’s a wee bit birdie I fand in a nest amang the hedges o’ Warriston,” said Geordie. “Its mither didna seem to care aboot it, and I hae brought it hame wi’ me. Gie’t a pickle crowdie, puir thing.”
Astonished, and partly displeased, Widow Willison took the child out of her son’s arms, and seeing its face swoln and blue, and marks of strangulation on its neck, her maternal sympathies arose, and she applied all the articles of a mother’s pharmacopœia with a view to restore it.
“But whar got ye the bairn, man?” she again inquired. “Gie us nane o’ yer nonsense about birds and hedges. Tell us the story sae as plain folk can understand it.”
“I hae already tauld ye,” said Geordie, dryly and slowly; “and it’s no my intention at present to tell ye ony mair aboot it. Ye didna ask whar I came frae when ye got me first.”
“An’ wha’s to bring up the bairn?” asked the mother, who knew it was in vain to put the same question twice to Geordie.
“Ye didna ask that question at my faither when I cam hame,” replied the stoic, with one of his peculiar looks; “but, if ye had, maybe ye wadna hae got sae kind an answer as I’ll gie ye: Geordie Willison will pay for bringing up the bairn; and I’ll no answer ony mair o’ yer questions.”
Strictly did Geordie keep his word with his mother. He would tell neither her nor his sister anything about the child. They knew his temper and disposition, and gradually resigned an importunity which had the effect of making him more obstinate. At night, when the child’s clothes were taken off, with a view to putting it to bed, Geordie got hold of them and carried them off, unknown to his mother. He locked them up in his chest, and, in the morning, when his mother asked him if he had seen them, he said he knew nothing about them. Annoyed by this conduct on the part of her son, his mother threatened to throw the child upon the parish as a foundling; and yet, when she reflected on the extreme sagacity which was mixed up with her son’s peculiarities, and read in his looks, which she well understood, a more than ordinary confidence of power to do what he had said, as to bringing up the child, she hesitated in her purpose, and at last resolved to go in with the humour and inclinations of her son, and do the duty of a mother to the babe.