Jean took the bairn reverently and gently. He did not greet; in his weakness he appreciated fully Jean’s light firm grasp, while he cuddled to her breast and looked up in her face with his child’s eyes. ‘Puir wee lamb,’ said Jean, sitting down again, for she had risen, as if his feather’s weight had overpowered her strength; and she stroked the wan cheeks till Jockie smiled with the ineffable sweetness of a sick child’s smile. ‘He looks far frae strong,’ said truthful Jean slowly, while Bob listened to her words as if they had been those of an oracle. ‘But I dinna think he has just the look that little Jack at the manse had--I ha’e a hope he’ll get ower his sickness. Do you mind, Bob, your mither used to say you were a silly bairn yoursel’ till you were sax years auld? and your Jockie has a look o’ you.’ ‘Do you think sae, Jean?’ said Bob, almost shame-faced at the extent of the compliment, while ready to bless her for the faintest encouragement to trust that Jockie might live to become a toil-worn, care-laden man like his father. But, no; Jockie, if he were spared, would have brighter fortunes; no true father or mother has ever ceased to dream that his or her child will be more successful in the best sense--happier in every way, in the path trodden and cleared before him. ‘I canna keep you longer, Jean,’ said Bob reluctantly but with manly tender forethought for her. ‘And I canna expeck that sic a favour will be repeated. I canna even find words to express to you how much I’m obleeged for this ca’. But if we should never meet again in this world, you’ll mind, Jean, I said as my last words to you, that, like the Maister you ha’e served all your life, you’ve returned gude for evil, you have done what you could to cheer the heart of a sick and lanely man.’ It was the single word of complaint he had allowed to fall from him, and he only let it pass his lips to enhance the value of her good deeds. The two had left the children in the room behind them, and were standing in the doorway about to part. ‘Bob,’ said Jean hurriedly, ‘I’m ready and willing to come again and stop, if you’re in the same mind that you were on the afternoon you spoke with me, at the smiddy well. The Miss Frasers have no more need o’ me. Eppie will gie in the lines and cite the minister to come here, and I’ll walk across the moor as soon as a’ is ready--if you are in the same mind, Bob.’ Jean spoke the words tremulously, but merely as a matter of course, in her recantation of her refusal. It was the thought farthest from her generous heart to choose this moment of all others in which to reproach him with his former faithlessness.