From over the street came the singing. Kirsty picked nervously at the crochet edging on her knitted wristlets. She half turned to look at Tammas, and her voice quavered:

“They’re no’ to bid me, Tammas.” But as Mistress MacNab’s door opened and Skilly’s lad came running out, Kirsty rose to her feet, eager and joyous. “Aye, they’re sendin’ for me noo.” She started toward the door. But the laddie ran past. Tammas helped her back to her chair. Then, for a Fraser, he rose to great heights.

“I’m sorry for them, mither,” he said. “It will be feckless[2]-like funeral without a fit at it.”

She sat up at the thought, grasping at it eagerly.

“Aye, will it no’, Tammas? Will it no’?” she cried gratefully.

Then, turning it over in her mind, she found it sweet with comfort, and she chuckled while the tears were still wet upon her face.

“They’ll value my fits more than ever noo, Tammas. Puir Sandy MacNab!”

She nursed the thought joyously. She was sorry that it had happened to Sandy MacNab, for he had been a good man, and deserving of honor; but she was glad that Mistress MacNab must share the humility.

“She’s cuttin’ off her nose ti spite her face, puir body! I could feel it in my heart ti pity her, Tammas.”

Fully recovered in spirit, she got up lightsomely, and began to unfasten the strings of her mutch.

“We’ll shut the door on the rest o’ ’t, Tammas,” she said, and was moving toward it when Mistress MacKenty came breathlessly in. She was burning with news to tell, and greedy to see its effect.

“Mistress MacNab is havin’ a fit, an’ Skilly’s laddie has gone for the doctor,” she cried.

“A fit!” Kirsty screamed the words in a hysteria of unbelief. “What would she be knowing of a fit, she that has never had one?”

Gloating with the joy of telling it, for she had always envied Kirsty her fits, Mistress MacKenty’s voice swelled with gratification as she answered:

“Such a fit as I have never seen. Her eyes are rollin’ to heaven, and the blood is frothin’ on her lips.”

At that Kirsty’s knees began to tremble beneath her. She put out a wavering hand and gripped Tammas by the sleeve, striving to keep upright and face Mistress MacKenty, who continued maliciously:

“Drumorty will never forget this fit. I’ll mind on ’t mysel’ if I ever hae a corp’.”

And Kirsty Fraser knew that her glory was gone. Another had stolen the chief jewel of her crown. There would be none in all Drumorty who would do her homage again.

But not before Mistress MacKenty would she bow her head. She took her hand from Tammas’ sleeve and stood alone, and nothing in her voice as she spoke told Mistress MacKenty that her pride lay stricken.

“Gie her the ammonia bottle to take over, Tammas. I hae had slight fits mysel’, an’ I ken ammonia’s good.”

And Mistress MacKenty wondered at this heroic thing that made Kirsty Fraser disclaim the glory of her fits and hand her laurels to another. She stood shamed before it, and she hung her head and crept away, unable longer to look Kirsty Fraser in the face.

Kirsty stood till she had gone; then her hand went feeling blindly for her chair. She cupped one hand helplessly in the other as she sat. The string of her black mutch hung down like a weary pendulum that had wagged its hour. As Tammas knelt by her, dumbly anxious to comfort, she whispered:

“Think ye she knows I care, Tammas?”

“Niver, mither. I would no’ have known it mysel’.”

Assured of that, she let the tears steal down her wrinkled cheeks. Her hands trembled together helplessly in her lap. Tammas reached out and held them firmly in his, and they sat there silently together.

Her thoughts went seeking comfort everywhere, but found none. With every funeral her pride would die a little more; with every funeral Mistress MacNab would reap a greater triumph. None would think of Kirsty’s fits except to say how poor they were, and how great were the fits of Mistress MacNab. And so until the end.

“O Tammas,” she cried, “when I am dead and lying helpless, ye’ll no’ let that Mistress MacNab have fits at my funeral! Promise me that, Tammas!”

SILK BOTH SIDES

SILK BOTH SIDES

“—And two and a half yards o’ four inch black satin ribbon.”

Jessie MacLean added this last fatal item with an upward jerk of her head lest Mistress MacKenty, at the other side of the counter, should think she was ashamed of her purchase. But Mistress MacKenty had a nose for news rather than an instinct for tragedy, and by the suppressed eagerness in her voice as she asked, “And ye’ll want it silk on both sides I’ll warrant?” you could see that she was already half-way down the road to the smithy to spread the news that: “Jessie MacLean had lost heart and would be out in a bonnet in the morn, so help her Davey.”

“Aye, silk both sides,” Jessie answered, letting her eyes range the shelves carelessly to prove that there was nothing momentous in her buying bonnet strings.

Silk both sides proved it! A satin-faced ribbon might have many uses, but silk both sides was a bonnet string by all the laws of millinery known to Drumorty.

Telling about it five minutes later, Mistress MacKenty said, “I might hae been wrang when she bought the silk geraniums, and I may hae been over-hasty when she said ‘half a yard o’ black lace’—but silk both sides is as good as swearing it on the Bible.”

In Drumorty, a bonnet with strings tied below the chin means that youth is over. About the time the second baby is born, the good wife abandons her hat—forever—and appears in a bonnet with ties. She may be any age from eighteen to twenty-five; for matrimony, and motherhood, and age, come early in Drumorty. The spinster clings longer to her hat, for while she wears it, any bachelor may take heart and “speer”[3] her; and if she be “keeping company” she may cling to her hat until she be thirty “and a bittock”; but after that—if she would hold the respect of her community, she must cease to “gallivant” about “wi’ a hat” and dress like a decent woman, in a bonnet with ties.

And Jessie MacLean was six and thirty as Baldie Tocher could tell you, for did he no’ have the pleasure of burying the exciseman the very morning that Jessie first saw the light of day, and was it no’ the very next year that Nancy MacFarland’s cow got mired in the moss?

Drumorty had been very lenient with her. Many a good wife thought it was high time that Jessie laid aside her hat, but always she held her peace, remembering her bridal gown and the care with which Jessie had made it, for Jessie was the village seamstress, and it was a secret, whispered, that she charged only half price for making wedding gowns, because she liked to make them so much.

Another reason for their lenience was Jock Sclessor. For fifteen years Jock had “kept company” with her; not one Sunday morning had he missed “crying by” for Jessie to go to morning service. He would come round the bend of the road from Skilly’s farm just as the sexton gave the bell that first introductory ring which meant “bide a wee till I get her goin’ full swing and then bide at hame frae the kirk if ye dare”; and Jessie would come out of her door and mince down the sanded walk between the rows of boxwood to the gate, and affect surprise at seeing Jock just as if she had not been watching for him behind her window curtain this past five minutes.

Jock was the cotter[4] on Skilly’s farm. Every year he intended to “speer” Jessie when thrashing was over. Tammas, his dog, will tell you how many times he had been on the very point of asking her the very next day, but—always the question of adding another room came up and not for the life of him could he decide whether to level the rowan tree and build it on the east—or to move the peats and build it on the west; and by the time he had made up his mind to cart the peats down behind the byre and build it on the west, lambing was round again and he let it go by for another year.

And every year Jessie was in a flutter as thrashing was nearing the finish. One year she had been so sure that he would “speer” her that she bought a new scraper; for Jock could make your very heart stand still, he was that careless about scraping the mud off his boots. Often when she was alone, she would practise ways of telling Jock that he must clean his boots before he came in: “Good man, hae ye forgotten the scraper?” was abandoned because it wasn’t strictly honest, for Jessie knew full well that he always forgot the scraper. “Gang back and clean your feet,” was set aside also, because it was too commanding and “Dinna forget the scraper” was also discarded because it isn’t good to nag a man before he has set foot in the door. But none of the expressions had been tried out yet—for when Jock dropped in with her, after service, Jessie hurried him by the scraper as if it might shout at him, “She expects you to speer her!” and so put her to shame.

But now thrashing had been over for weeks, and every Sunday since then, she had looked for the white gowan[5] in Jock’s coat, for what swain “worth his ears full of cold water” ever asked the question without that emblem of courage in his buttonhole? It is a signal to the world that he means to propose, that he is going in cold blood to do it—and forever after his good wife can remind him of that, should he suggest that he was inveigled into it by some female wile.