would be suspicious o’ you,” Nanny explained, “you being an Egyptian.”
“Ah,” said Babbie, with a side-glance at the minister, “I am only an Egyptian. Is that why you dislike me, Mr. Dishart?”
Gavin hesitated foolishly over his answer, and the Egyptian, with a towel round her waist, made a pretty gesture of despair.
“He neither likes you nor dislikes you,” Nanny explained; “you forget he’s a minister.”
“That is what I cannot endure,” said Babbie, putting the towel to her eyes, “to be neither liked nor disliked. Please hate me, Mr. Dishart, if you cannot lo—ove me.”
Her face was behind the towel, and Gavin could not decide whether it was the face or the towel that shook with agitation. He gave Nanny a look that asked, “Is she really crying?” and Nanny telegraphed back, “I question it.”
“Come, come,” said the minister, gallantly, “I did not say that I disliked you.”
Even this desperate compliment had not the desired effect, for the gypsy continued to sob behind her screen.
“I can honestly say,” went on Gavin, as solemnly as if he were making a statement in a court of justice, “that I like you.”
Then the Egyptian let drop her towel, and replied with equal solemnity:
“Oh, tank oo! Nanny, the minister says me is a dood ’ittle dirl.”
“He didna gang that length,” said Nanny, sharply, to cover Gavin’s confusion. “Set the things, Babbie, and I’ll make the tea.”
The Egyptian obeyed demurely, pretending to wipe her eyes every time Gavin looked at her. He frowned at this, and then she affected to be too overcome to go on with her work.
“Tell me, Nanny,” she asked presently, “what sort of man this Enoch is, from whom I bought the things?”
“He is not very regular, I fear,” answered Gavin, who felt that he had sat silent and self-conscious on his stool too long.
“Do you mean that he drinks?” asked Babbie.
“No, I mean regular in his attendance.”
The Egyptian’s face showed no enlightenment.
“His attendance at church,” Gavin explained.
“He’s far frae it,” said Nanny, “and as a body kens, Joe Cruickshanks, the atheist, has the wite o’ that. The scoundrel telled Enoch that the great ministers in Edinbury and London believed in no hell except sic as your ain conscience made for you, and ever since syne Enoch has been careless about the future state.”
“Ah,” said Babbie, waving the Church aside, “what I want to know is whether he is a single man.”
“He is not,” Gavin replied; “but why do you want to know that?”
“Because single men are such gossips. I am sorry he is not single, as I want him to repeat to everybody what I told him.”
“Trust him to tell Susy,” said Nanny, “and Susy to tell the town.”
“His wife is a gossip?”
“Ay, she’s aye tonguing, especially about her teeth. They’re folk wi’ siller, and she has a set o’ false teeth. It’s fair scumfishing to hear her blawing about thae teeth, she’s so fleid we dinna ken that they’re false.”
Nanny had spoken jealously, but suddenly she trembled with apprehension.
“Babbie,” she cried, “you didna speak about the poorhouse to Enoch?”
The Egyptian shook her head, though of the poorhouse she had been forced to speak, for Enoch, having seen the doctor going home alone, insisted on knowing why.
“But I knew,” the gypsy said, “that the Thrums people would be very unhappy until they discovered where you get the money I am to give you, and as that is a secret, I hinted to Enoch that your benefactor is Mr. Dishart.”
“You should not have said that,” interposed Gavin. “I cannot foster such a deception.”
“They will foster it without your help,” the Egyptian said. “Besides, if you choose, you can say you get the money from a friend.”
“Ay, you can say that,” Nanny entreated with such eagerness that Babbie remarked a little bitterly:
“There is no fear of Nanny’s telling any one that the friend is a gypsy girl.”
“Na, na,” agreed Nanny, again losing Babbie’s sarcasm. “I winna let on. It’s so queer to be befriended by an Egyptian.”
“It is scarcely respectable,” Babbie said.
“It’s no,” answered simple Nanny.
I suppose Nanny’s unintentional cruelty did hurt Babbie as much as Gavin thought. She winced, and her face had two expressions, the one cynical, the other pained. Her mouth curled as if to tell the minister that gratitude was nothing to her, but her eyes had to struggle to keep back a tear. Gavin was touched, and she saw it, and for a moment they were two people who understood each other.
“I, at least,” Gavin said in a low voice, “will know who is the benefactress, and think none the worse of her because she is a gypsy.”
At this Babbie smiled gratefully to him, and then both laughed, for they had heard Nanny remarking to the kettle, “But I wouldna hae been nane angry if she had telled Enoch that the minister was to take his tea here. Susy’ll no believe’t though I tell her, as tell her I will.”
To Nanny the table now presented a rich appearance, for besides the teapot there were butter and loaf-bread and cheesies: a biscuit of which only Thrums knows the secret.
“Draw in your chair, Mr. Dishart,” she said, in suppressed excitement.
“Yes,” said Babbie, “you take this chair, Mr. Dishart, and Nanny will have that one, and I can sit humbly on the stool.”
But Nanny held up her hands in horror.
“Keep us a’!” she exclaimed; “the lassie thinks her and me is to sit down wi’ the minister! We’re no to gang that length, Babbie; we’re just to stand and serve him, and syne we’ll sit down when he has risen.”
“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.”
“SIT DOWN, BOTH OF YOU, AT ONCE!”
Then the
