"What about, sir?"
"About anything: if you want a friend you'll trust me?"
"Oh, ay, sir: I'll do that; but I'm no ill off for friends."
"I should think not," he said. "Where does your married sister live?"
"Oh, far away—away up on the English hand."
"What is her husband?"
"He has a bit land o' his ain, sir: she made a gude marriage, it's thought, but I whiles jalouse he's no very gude to her."
"Surely not, surely not," said the doctor; and a vision crossed him of this beautiful and simple girl he was speaking to marrying some coarse working-man, and being made a hardly-used drudge of to the end of her days; and he determined it should not be. He determined it should not be: surely, she was born for some better fate. The very idea of it made him feel dazed, and it was possible that even now she was pledged to some such thing. Another man would have had no difficulty in "chaffing" her on such a subject and finding out all he wanted to know, but this man could not: even if chaffing had been a habit with him, he could not have done it in this instance: his feeling was far too deep and real and reverent to admit of it. He went back to his patient and tried to listen to her story as usual, but in truth it was little of it that he heard. He was in a dream.
After he went away, Bell looked across to her young attendant, who was sweeping up about the fireside in active business-style, and said, "My bonnie leddy, see that ye dinna wark mischief."