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Updated: June 21, 2025
"And you are only fifteen!" said Miss Ailie, eying her little maid sorrowfully. "The easier to carry," replied Gavinia, darkly. "And you named after a minister!" Miss Ailie continued, for her maid had been christened Gavinia because she was the first child baptized in his church after the Rev. Gavin Dishart came to Thrums. "Gavinia, I must tell him of this. I shall take this book to Mr.
"The Den's no mous the night," said Corp at last, in a low voice, and his unspoken fears spread to the womankind, so that Miss Ailie shuddered and Elspeth gripped Tommy with both hands and Gavinia whispered, "Let's away hame, we can come back in the daylight."
Six miles from home he saw a mud house on the top of a hill, and ascended genially. He found at their porridge a very old lady with a nut-cracker face, and a small boy. We shall see them again. "Auld wifie," said Corp, "I dinna ken you, but I've just stepped up to tell you that Gavinia is to hae me." It made him the butt of the sportive.
Some did not approve of his playing at the teetotum for ten minutes with Kitty Dundas's invalid son, but the way Kitty boasted about it would have disgusted anybody. At the present day there are probably a score of Gavins in Thrums, all called after the little minister, and there is one Gavinia, whom he hesitated to christen.
They were small, and the remainder of their brief career was in two parts. First he lifted them by the tail, then he laid down the tail. But not a word about the glove. She tried tears. "Dinna greet, woman," he said in distress. "What would the bairn say if he kent I made you greet?" Gavinia went on greeting, and the baby, waking up, promptly took her side. "D n the thing!" said Corp.
This dark suggestion was as great a shock to the gentle school-mistress as if out of a clear sky had come suddenly the word Stroke! She tottered with the book that had so demoralized the once meek Gavinia into the blue-and-white room, where Tommy was restlessly awaiting her, and when she had told him all, he said, with downcast eyes: "I was never sure o' Mrs. Dishart.
Seeing that, despite his bantering tone, he was speaking seriously, she pressed him for his meaning, but he only replied sadly, "You're like the rest, Gavinia, I see it breaking out on you in spots." "An illness!" she cried, in alarm. "Ay, lassie, an illness called curiosity. I had just been telling Mr. McLean that curiosity is essentially a woman's ailment, and up you come ahint to prove it."
He heard her inquiring for one Alexander Bett, and being told that there was no such person in Thrums, "He's married on a woman of the name of Gavinia," said the old lady; and then they directed her to the house of the only Gavinia in the place. With dark forebodings Corp skulked after her. He remembered who she was now.
When Tommy and Elspeth reached the Den the mist lay so thick that they had to feel their way through it to the Ailie, where they found Gavinia alone and scared. "Was you peeping in, trying to fleg me twa three minutes syne?" she asked, eagerly, and when they shook their heads, she looked cold with fear.
All this time another problem had been bewildering Gavinia, and now she broke in, eagerly: "But what was it he did? I thought he was agin Mr. McLean." "And so did I," said Corp. "I cheated you grandly," replied Tommy with the audacity he found so useful. "And a' the time you was pretending to be agin him," screamed Gavinia, "was you was you bringing this about on the sly?"
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