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Updated: May 8, 2025
Then, when it was fairly lit, he knocked off the coal, packed down the tobacco, put on the little tin cap, and sat back in his covered arm-chair, and came as near beaming upon the world as ever he allowed himself to come. "Here, Jessac," he said to the little dark-faced maiden slipping about the table under the mother's silent direction. Jessac glanced at her mother and hesitated.
It took the united persuasions of Billy Jack and Jessac and Hughie to get the fiddle into Thomas' hands, but after a few tuning scrapes all shyness and moodiness vanished, and soon the reels and strathspeys were dropping from Thomas' flying fingers in a way that set Hughie's blood tingling.
The father and Billy Jack were busy with the farm matters outside, upon little Jessac, now a girl of twelve years, fell the care of the house, but it was Thomas that, with the assistance of a neighbor at first, but afterwards alone, waited on his mother, dressing the wound and nursing her. These weeks of watching and nursing had wrought in him the subtle change that stirred Mrs.
Hughie gazed, uncertain whether to allow himself to admire Jessac's performance, or to regard it with a boy's scorn, as she was only a girl. And yet he could not escape the fascination of the swift, rhythmic movement of the neat, twinkling feet. "Well done, Jessac, lass," said her father, proudly. "But what would the minister be saying at such frivolity?" he added, glancing at Hughie.
And Jessac, laying aside shyness, went at her Highland reel with the same serious earnestness she gave to her tidying or her knitting.
As Hughie was saying his good bys, he was thinking most of the twinkling feet and the tossing curls, and so he added to his farewells, "Good by, Jessac.
"Huh! he can do it himself well enough," said Hughie, "and I tell you what, I only wish I could do it." "I'll show you," said Jessac, shyly, but for the first time in his life Hughie's courage failed, and though he would have given much to be able to make his feet twinkle through the mazes of the Highland reel, he could not bring himself to accept teaching from Jessac.
But when the fiddler struck into Money Musk, Billy Jack signed Jessac to him, and whispering to her, set her out on the middle of the floor. "Aw, I don't like to," said Jessac, twisting her apron into her mouth. "Come away, Jessac," said her mother, quietly, "do your best."
Very carefully, and in spite of her protests that she could walk quite well, Thomas carried his mother out to her chair in the shade of the house, arranging with tender solicitude the pillows at her back and the rug at her feet. Then they set to work at the potatoes. "Mind you have two eyes in every seed, Hughie," said Jessac, severely. "Huh! I know.
If it had only been Thomas or Billy Jack who had offered, he would soon enough have been on the floor. For a moment he hesitated, then with a sudden inspiration, he cried, "All right. Do it again. I'll watch." But the mother said quietly, "I think that will do, Jessac. And I am afraid your father will be going with cold hands if you don't hurry with those mitts."
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