Last Sunday, on their way to church, Jessie cleared her throat nervously and grasped her new testament, bracing herself as she asked in a thin voice that was much too offhand: “Would your peats no’ be better sheltered in the lea o’ the byre?” and Jock replied: “Na, they are better where they are.”

And so a hope, nourished fifteen years, died, and through the service she sat gazing straight ahead, with her eyes wide open, for the wider eyes are open, the more tears they can hold without spilling over. And next Saturday she bought black satin ribbon “silk both sides” and the world, meaning Drumorty, knew that Jessie’s tombstone would not read “Beloved wife of ——”.

In Jessie’s cottage the blinds were drawn on Saturday evening, and you who have suffered will not ask me to pull them aside and show you how a faded spinster looks when she weeps; nor how her fingers tremble when she sews upon bonnet strings; but let me tell you how bravely she stepped out next morning wearing her bonnet, with never a look through the curtain to see if Jock was on his way, nor a glance to see if the neighbors were watching. Her step was just as firm upon the sanded path, and her head just as high; perhaps she grasped her testament more tightly than usual, but what soul on the rack would not do that?

Jock came round the bend as she reached the gate. She clung to the latch to keep herself from tearing the bonnet from her head. Oh, Fate, that sits high and laughs, have you the heart to laugh now? Jock was wearing a white gowan. It was just a dozen steps or so back to the house, and a hat, and happiness; but the world knew that she had bought bonnet strings and was that not Mistress MacKenty watching from behind her curtain? Go forward, Jessie—there is no turning back, and go proudly! Open the latch and answer his “guid morning” and smile—and don’t, don’t, let your hands tremble so, or he will surely guess!

Look your fill from behind the curtain, Mistress MacKenty! You can not see a heartache when it is hidden by a black alpaca gown and when the heart belongs to Jessie MacLean!

Jock Sclessor, your one chance of happiness is now! Lead her back into the house and take the bonnet from her head! No, laggard and fool that you are, you are wondering if she has noticed the gowan! Has she not! She has watched for it for fifteen years! Speak, you fool! Don’t keep staring at her bonnet! You dullard, Jessie must come to your rescue, and she does, “Is the sexton no’ late this morning?” Jessie turned out of the gate as she spoke, snapping the latch with the right amount of care.

“Aye, later than usual,” Jock agreed. (The sexton was never late in his life, and at that moment the bell rang out to give Jock the lie.) But Jock was so dazed, he would have agreed if she had said, “Let us choke the minister.”

As they walked to the church, he meditated, “Evidently she never expected me to speer her, and she’s never so much as glimpsed the gowan. I’ll slip it out when we kneel in the kirk. But maybe I better sound her out first. It’s gey[6] and lonesome for a man biding by himself.”

They were just turning round by the town hall where the rowan trees are red, when he said, “I had been thinkin’ o’ levelin’ my rowan tree.” Jessie’s heart thumped. Here it came! (That was why he wouldn’t move the peats.) But she wouldn’t help him a foot of the road—she had waited too long—he must come every step himself.

“Oh, that would be a pity—it’s a bonnie tree,” she answered.

Not much help here, but he would try again. “I was thinking o’ building.”

“Building? My certies! What could ye be building so near the house?” this with some malice for all the fifteen long years. But you have gone too far, Jessie; he needs help.

“I—oh—I thought I’d build a shed for peats.”

Thud! That was Jessie’s heart you heard and that queer thin voice is Jessie’s, saying, “I thought—ye were minded to leave the peats the other side o’ the house.”

“Aye, I am minded to leave them there—but a body canna hae too many peats.”

And as they knelt in kirk, he slipped the gowan out—and Jessie did not need to widen her eyes to hold the tears this time. That sorrow was past, she would never weep over it again.

At home, she brewed her tea, looking round at her rag rugs and white tidies with pleasure. The tidy on the big chair was as white and smooth as when she pinned it there in the morning, and there was no mud to be carefully washed off the rug by the door. There was a certain contentment in knowing that it would never be; a certain exhilaration in knowing that next Sunday she could not be disappointed, because next Sunday she would not hope. She sipped her tea peacefully and smiled at the bonnet sitting so restful-like on the dresser, and at the tidy on the big chair so spotless and smooth, and thought, “Jock Sclessor would have been a mussy man to have about a house. I’m thinkin’ his mother was over-lenient when she brought him up.”

And Jock, at Skilly’s, was thinking, “I wouldna had time to build it anyway. Lambing is here—and that is too bonnie a tree to be cut down.”

THE SINNING OF JESSIE MACLEAN

THE SINNING OF JESSIE MACLEAN

Jessie MacLean felt that their romance belonged also to her, for she had seen their first meeting. It was on a Sunday morning after service, and Jessie was returning from her walk along by Skilly’s wood. She was wondering as she stepped daintily, rustling her Sunday-best alpaca gown, if the gold chain she wore had marked her neck; and whether the gimlet-eyed Mistress MacKenty had seen it as she sat behind her in kirk. (Well, it wasn’t all gold, but, as Jessie protested defensively to herself: “Pure gold’s that soft ye have ti mix it.”)

On hot Sundays it was always a race between the sermon and the chain; about the time the minister got to the “thirdlies” and “lastlies” Jessie was in a fidget. She could wear the chain a bare hour and a half without it marking if the weather was cool; but this had been a very hot Sunday. Out of the sight of inquisitive eyes she stopped and spread her handkie between the chain and her neck. Then she turned along Skilly’s burnside intending to cross it at the stepping-stones; and it was here she came upon them. So flustered was she, that she forgot the dangling handkie, but then she might have worn ram’s horns and they would not have noticed it.

Gawky and shy, they were exchanging their first “It’s waurm the day” and “What’s yer hurry” which in Drumorty may mean: “Who is this gallant youth who stirs my bosom?” or, “Fair maid, eternity were too brief, could I but spend it gazing in your eyes.”

Jessie understood, and seeing their embarrassment, blushed in sympathy and tilted her parasol between herself and them. She had meant to cross the burn at the stepping-stones, but, her heart pleasantly aflutter with a sense of being a sharer in a secret, she kept on down the burnside until she was out of sight; and there she sat down and removed her shoes and stockings before hitching her dress to her knees and wading the burn.

Jessie’s own romance laid away in the lavender of memory, stirred again at the thought of the two. Walking home she pondered who the lad might be. He was a stranger in Drumorty. The lass was Bella Tocher, the kitchen wench at Skilly’s farm; a well-favored lass, and hard working, rosy and full-bosomed although barely sixteen.

So engrossed was she, that she went all the way home without remembering to remove the telltale handkie from her neck; and never gave it a thought, until, as she was turning in at her own door, Mistress MacKenty leaned over the gate and sweetly malicious, called, so that Jessie would know she had seen: “Ye do weel ti guard agin’ blood-poisinin’, Jessie lass.”

Next Sunday Jessie did an unheard-of thing. She stayed at home from the morning service and watched the road to Skilly’s farm to see if the lad would come back. She had fortified herself against disappointment by boiling dumplings in the broth. No matter how keen the edge of disappointment, Jessie had proved that dumplings in the broth could ease it a little. And after spending all morning at the window watching, with a bandage bound about her neck to advertise to the curious that a sore throat had kept her at home from the kirk, she was just about to turn to the dumplings for solace, when he came by whistling and heading up the road to Skilly’s.

“My certies!” she cried, pretending to herself that she was shocked at his ardor. “He’s back again, doesna gie the lassie time to draw a lanely breath.”

Feeling the need of some one to rejoice with her, she gave the cat a dumpling. It sniffed it, and showed its contempt for her frivolity by crossing to the other side of the fireplace and seating itself with its back to her. Jessie, taking this rebuff with unusual spirit, retorted: “You’re a persnickety old maid, there’s no’ a romantic hair on yer head.” And to show that she wouldn’t be brow-beaten by the cat on this joyful day, she opened the glass-door of the what-not with a loud click; and later, ate her dumplings off the best willow-pattern china.