"No, mem," with a shake of the head that seemed to convey that she had something else, and probably better, to do.
"Did you ever hear of God?" asked the lady who had brought her.
"Ay, mem," answered Baubie quite readily: "it's a kind of a bad word I hear in the streets."
"How old are you?" asked both ladies simultaneously.
"Thirteen past," replied Baubie, with a promptness that made her listeners smile, suggesting as it did the thought that the question had been put to her before, and that Baubie knew well the import of her answer.
She grew more communicative now. She could not read, but, all the same, she knew two songs which she sang in the streets—"Before the Battle" and "After the Battle;" and, carried away by the thought of her own powers, she actually began to give proof of her assertion by reciting one of them there and then. This, however, was stopped at once. "Can knit too," she added then.
"Who taught you to knit?"
"Don' know. Wis at a Sunday-schuil too."
"Oh, you were? And what did you learn there?"
Baubie Wishart looked puzzled, consulted her toes in vain, and then finally gave it up.