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For what would it be but clean impidence o' me to think 'at there was a time when I was sittin whaur I'm sittin the noo and thinkin 't i' the vera kirk! I would be nearhan' deein for shame!" "Didn't you ever think, Isy, that maybe I might marry you some day?" said James jokingly, confident in the gulf between them. "Na, no ance. I kenned better nor that!
The only comfort he could now find for his guilty soul was the thought that he could do nothing, for he did not know where Isy was to be found.
By and by, her husband came in to have his dinner, and finding herself compelled, much against her will, to leave the two together, she sent up Eppie to take Isy's place, with the message that she was to go down at once. Isy obeyed, and went to the kitchen; but, perturbed and trembling, dropped on the first chair she came to.
Then she caught sight of Maggie, who had entered behind her father, and stood staring at her motionless, with a look of gladness indeed, but not all of gladness. "I ken fine," Isy broke out, with a trembling, yet eager, apologetic voice, "ye're grudgin me ilka luik at him! I ken't by mysel! Ye're thinkin him mair yours nor mine!
He put his arm round her little waist, and would have drawn her down upon his knees, but she resisted. "I don't see what difference that can make in you all at once, Isy! We've known each other so long that there can be no misunderstanding of any sort between us.
"Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these, ye did it to me!" insisted her hostess. "That doesna apply, ma'am," objected Isy. "I'm nane o' his!" "Who is then? Who was it he came to save? Are you not one of his lost sheep? Are you not weary and heavy-laden? Will you never let him feel at home with you? Are you to say who he is to love and who he isn't?
Isy was a small, dark, neat little thing, with finely formed features, and a look of child-like simplicity, not altogether removed from childishness. She answered him first with her very blue eyes full of love and trust, then said "Plenty o' time, sir. What other have I to do than see that you be at your ease?"
It blew away the long-gathered vapours of his self-satisfaction and conceit; it blew wide the windows of his soul, that the sweet odour of his father's and mother's thoughts concerning him might enter; and when it entered, he knew it for what it was; it blew back to him his own judgments of them and their doings, and he saw those judgments side by side with his new insights into their real thoughts and feelings; it blew away the desert sands of his own moral dulness, indifference, and selfishness, that had so long hidden beneath them the watersprings of his own heart, existent by and for love and its gladness; it cleared all his conscious being, made him understand that he had never hitherto loved his mother or his father, or any neighbour; that he had never loved God one genuine atom, never loved the Lord Christ, his Master, or cared in the least that he had died for him; had never at any moment loved Isy least of all when to himself he pleaded in his own excuse that he had loved her.
Thus had the mother herself become an evil councillor, crying Peace! peace! when there was no peace, and tempting her son to go on and become a devil! But one thing yet rose up for the truth in his miserable heart his reviving and growing love for Isy. It had seemed smothered in selfishness, but was alive and operative: God knows how perhaps through feverish, incoherent, forgotten dreams.
Gien ye dinna learn to ate, we s' never get ony guid o' ye!" "I just can't eat for gladness," returned Isy. "Ye're that good to me, that I dare hardly think aboot it; it'll gar me greit! Lat me help ye, mem, and I'll grow hungry by dennertime!" Mrs. Blatherwick understood, and said no more.
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