"It won't do, Mr. Dishart, for even your face betrays you. No, no, I am an old bird, but I have not forgotten the ways of the fledgelings. 'Hopeless bachelor,' sir, is a sweetmeat in every young man's mouth until of a sudden he finds it sour, and that means the banns. When is it to be?" "We must find the lady first," said the minister, uncomfortably. "You tell me, in spite of that face, that you have not fixed on her?" "The difficulty, I suppose, would be to persuade her to fix on me." "Not a bit of it. But you admit there is some one?" "Who would have me?" "You are wriggling out of it. Is it the banker's daughter?" "No," Gavin cried. "I hear you have walked up the back wynd with her three times this week. The town is in a ferment about it." "She is a great deal in the back wynd." "Fiddle-de-dee! I am oftener in the back wynd than you, and I never meet her there." "That is curious." "No, it isn't, but never mind. Perhaps you have fallen to Miss Pennycuick's piano? Did you hear it going as we passed the house?" "She seems always to be playing on her piano." "Not she; but you are supposed to be musical, and so when she sees you from her window she begins to thump. If I am in the school wynd and hear the piano going, I know you will turn the corner immediately. However, I am glad to hear it is not Miss Pennycuick. Then it is the factor at the Spittal's lassie? Well done, sir. You should arrange to have the wedding at the same time as the old earl's, which comes off in summer, I believe." "One foolish marriage is enough in a day, doctor." "Eh? You call him a fool far marrying a young wife? Well, no doubt he is, but he would have been a bigger fool to marry an old one. However, it is not Lord Rintoul we are discussing, but Gavin Dishart. I suppose you know that the factor's lassie is an heiress?" "And, therefore, would scorn me." "Try her," said the doctor, drily. "Her father and mother, as I know, married on a ten-pound note. But if I am wrong again, I must adopt the popular view in Thrums. It is a Glasgow lady after all? Man, you needn't look indignant at hearing that the people are discussing your intended. You can no more stop it than a doctor's orders could keep Lang Tammas out of church. They have discovered that she sends you flowers twice every week." "They never reach me," answered Gavin, then remembered the holly and winced. "Some," persisted the relentless doctor, "even speak of your having been seen together; but of course, if she is a Glasgow lady, that is a mistake." "Where did they see us?" asked Gavin, with a sudden trouble in his throat. "You are shaking," said the doctor, keenly, "like a medical student at his first operation. But as for the story that you and the lady have been seen together, I can guess how it arose. Do you remember that gypsy girl?" The doctor had begun by addressing the fire, but he suddenly wheeled round and fired his question in the minister's face. Gavin, however, did not even blink.