"Delightful!" said Babbie, clapping her hands. "Nanny, you kneel on that side of him, and I will kneel on this. You will hold the butter and I the biscuits." But Gavin, as this girl was always forgetting, was a lord of creation. "Sit down both of you at once!" he thundered, "I command you." Then the two women fell into their seats; Nanny in terror, Babbie affecting it. CHAPTER XV. THE MINISTER BEWITCHED--SECOND SERMON AGAINST WOMEN. To Nanny it was a dizzying experience to sit at the head of her own table, and, with assumed calmness, invite the minister not to spare the loaf-bread. Babbie's prattle, and even Gavin's answers, were but an indistinct noise to her, to be as little regarded, in the excitement of watching whether Mr. Dishart noticed that there was a knife for the butter, as the music of the river by a man who is catching trout. Every time Gavin's cup went to his lips Nanny calculated (correctly) how much he had drunk, and yet, when the right moment arrived, she asked in the English voice that is fashionable at ceremonies, "if his cup was toom." Perhaps it was well that Nanny had these matters to engross her, for though Gavin spoke freely, he was saying nothing of lasting value, and some of his remarks to the Egyptian, if preserved for the calmer contemplation of the morrow, might have seemed frivolous to himself. Usually his observations were scrambled for, like ha'pence at a wedding, but to-day they were only for one person. Infected by the Egyptian's high spirits, Gavin had laid aside the minister with his hat, and what was left was only a young man. He who had stamped his feet at thought of a soldier's cloak now wanted to be reminded of it. The little minister, who used to address himself in terms of scorn every time he wasted an hour, was at present dallying with a teaspoon. He even laughed boisterously, flinging back his head, and little knew that behind Nanny's smiling face was a terrible dread, because his chair had once given way before. Even though our thoughts are not with our company, the mention of our name is a bell to which we usually answer. Hearing hers Nanny started. "You can tell me, Nanny," the Egyptian had said, with an arch look at the minister. "Oh, Nanny, for shame! How can you expect to follow our conversation when you only listen to Mr. Dishart?" "She is saying, Nanny," Gavin broke in, almost gaily for a minister, "that she saw me recently wearing a cloak. You know I have no such thing." "Na," Nanny answered artlessly, "you have just the thin brown coat wi' the braid round it, forby the ane you have on the now." "You see," Gavin said to Babbie, "I could not have a new neckcloth, not to speak of a cloak, without everybody in Thrums knowing about it. I dare say Nanny knows all about the braid, and even what it cost."