“If ever there was a living creature slow at the uptake, and that could not see a pikestaff when it is set before your eyes!” cried Miss Bethune. “What’s the meaning of it all, you stupid woman? Who’s that away in the unknown that sends all these bonnie things to that motherless bairn?--and remembers the age she is, and when she’s grown too big for dolls, and when she wants a frock that will set her off, that she could dance in and sing in, and make her little curtesy to the world? No, she’s too young for that; but still the time’s coming, and fancy goes always a little before.” “Eh, mem,” said Gilchrist, “that is just what I have askit mysel’--that’s just what I was saying. It’s some woman, that’s the wan thing; but what woman could be so thoughtful as that, aye minding just what was wanted?” She made a gesture with her hands as if in utter inability to divine, but her eyes were fixed all the time very wistfully on her mistress’s face. “You need not look at me like that,” the lady said. “I was looking at you, mem, not in any particklar way.” “If you think you can make a fool of me at the present period of our history, you’re far mistaken,” said Miss Bethune. “I know what you were meaning. You were comparing her with me, not knowing either the one or the other of us--though you have been my woman, and more near me than anybody on earth these five-and-twenty long years.” “And more, mem, and more!” cried Gilchrist, with a flow of tears, which were as natural to her as her spirit. “Eh, I was but a young, young lass, and you a bonnie ----” “Hold your peace!” said Miss Bethune, with an angry raising of her hand; and then her voice wavered and shook a little, and a tremulous laugh came forth. “I was never a bonnie--anything, ye auld fool! and that you know as well as me.” “But, mem----” “Hold your peace, Gilchrist! We were never anything to brag of, either you or me. Look in your glass, woman, if you don’t believe me. A couple of plain women, very plain women, mistress and maid.” This was said with a flash of hazel eyes which gave a half-humorous contradiction at the same moment to the assertion. Gilchrist began to fold hems upon the apron with which she had just dried her tears. “I never said,” she murmured, with a downcast head, “a word about mysel’,--that’s no’ a woman’s part. If there’s nobody that speaks up for her she has just to keep silence, if she was the bonniest woman in the world.” “The auld fool! because there was once a silly lad that had nobody else to come courting to! No, Gilchrist, my woman, you were never bonnie. A white skin, I allow, to go with your red hair, and a kind of innocent look in your eyes,--nothing, nothing more! We were both plain women, you and me, not adapted to please the eyes of men.” “They might have waited long afore we would have tried, either the wan or the other of us,” cried Gilchrist, with a flash of self-assertion. “No’ that I would even mysel’ to you, mem,” she added in an after breath.