"Oh, ay, I can read no that ill: I whiles take a lesson on the newspapers."
"Can you write?"
"Weel, I canna say muckle for my writing, but the likes o' us hae nae time to put off writing;" and she sent her eyes right into the eyes of the doctor, as they stood beside Bell's little window—innocently, simply, appealingly, the doctor felt—and from that moment he was a lost man: his prudence went down like straws before the wind.
"You are far too beautiful," he said with deep earnestness, "to go to service: would you not like to be educated and be a lady?"
"Oh, I wad like it weel aneuch, I daur say, but I'll just hae to be content wi' the place I'm in: I've a heap to be thankfu' for, and I maun bide wi' my faither."
"But you'll not be with him if you are at service?"
"No, but I can help him with the siller I mak."
The doctor was silent. This girl was good, then, as well as beautiful.
"Are you his only child?" he asked: "have you no brothers or sisters?"
"I've nae brothers, but I've twa sisters."