The McBrides | Page 8

a bright smile and no hesitation. "The Laird tells me he's wasted enough keep for many bullocks laying the yard with straw lest his horses should wake me in the mornings, but I've missed his songs lying here. They were merry enough too in the fine spring mornings if the words were . . ." And a delicate flush crept over her neck and face, and she smiled a little as at the fault of some wayward boy.
The door was opened softly, and a tall woman entered--a tall woman with a world of sorrow in her wise old eyes, and years of patience in the clasp of her hands.
"Betty," cried the patient--"Betty, is everything done well, now I'm tied to my son," and she put her cheek to the downy head.
"The weemen are flighty and the lads are quate, and the hoose will no' be itsel' till ye will be moving about again, an' Miss Janet's lad will . . ."
"I will not have Dan called that, Betty," says my aunt. "Ewan McBride's lad he is, if ye must deave me with his forebears . . ."
"My dearie, my ain dearie, did I not nurse his mother when she grat ower his wee body and a' the warl' was turned on her, and her man at the great wars. Ech, ech, a weary time, and her crying to him in the nicht, and throwin' oot her white arms in the stillness and crying: 'My brave fierce lad, my brave wild lover, come back and let me dee wi' your arms aboot me.' Ay, and her wild lad, her kindly lad, lying stark on yon bluidy field and the corbies maybe at his bonny blue een. I love Dan, for I took him frae his mither's caul' breast; but ech, why will he be shaming his name, and shaming his ain sel'--but I shouldna be haverin', my dearie . . . and here's your soup now."
Jean--she of the stable raid--with a haughty look at the gipsy, who had stood in a corner by the fire all this time, came with the bowl of soup, but Belle slid forward noiselessly.
"Is it soup, Jean?" says she, and the wench stopped. "Skim the fat off it, then, for I saw a hussy like you gi'e her mistress soup like that--and she died." My aunt sat up in her bed, her face very stern when Betty talked of Dan shaming himself and his name.
"I will know this," she cried. "I am not ill any more--who is the woman?"
Jean would have spoken at this, but the gipsy whispered: "Begone, or I'll turn your hair white as the driven snaw," and the wench fled with her soup, and spilled most of it in the stone-flagged corridor leading to the kitchen, where she sat and trembled and grat her fill, every now and again catching her yellow locks to make sure no change had started yet.
So here we have Betty whispering--
"Don't vex yoursel', my Leddy; it's juist the lassie's clavers, for Jean cam' in frae the stable, where she had nae right to be, except to be seein' her lad--they ha'e lads on the brain the lassies noo--and greetin' that young Dan had shamed her before the men, and a' because o' a tinker body like Belle here, although the great folk will treat her so kindly; no' that I mean her any harm," she added (erring on the safe side, for Belle's eyes had begun to glow finely); "and then in came Kate and Leezie wi' a tale o' a wean, tied in a tartan shawl, lying in a biss in the wee byre. Then and there they faithered and mithered the bairn, the useless hussies. . . ." The mother's haughty eyes turned to the gipsy.
"I never found you lying, Belle. Is this story true?--a bonny family is this to be among," she cried, her hand pressing the child closer, and maybe she pressed him too tightly, for the boy doubled his baby fist, his wee voice whimpered, and his outflung arm struck his mother in the face.
"Oh, oh," she cried; "will you turn on me too, and leave me for farmer's wenches and tinker women like the lave of your folk?"
The gipsy lass was on her knees at the bedside.
"Lady," she cries, and her face was finely aglow, "nae wonder ye grieved aboot the colour o' the bairn's hair. Are ye a' Dan mad?" Then when she saw the anger in the mother's eyes she cries--
"Ye'll maybe be in a mood to listen to the truth now."
"I'm in a fine mood to have ye whipped from my doors, ye shameless . . ."
"Ay, shameless, madam, if I love I'll be that, but if I have a man I'll share him wi' nane, and you'll not