Читать книгу The Primrose Path: A Chapter in the Annals of the Kingdom of Fife онлайн

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“My bonnie woman!” said the cobbler; the same ring of pain was in his voice; but the very delicacy of his sympathy, and its acuteness, kept him silent. He made another pause: “Jeanie, my lass,” he said, “in a’ the trials o’ this life I’ve found that true that was said to them that were first sent out to preach the Word. God’s awfu’ good, to give us the same for the common need as is for the divine. ‘Tak’ nae thought in that hour what ye will say.’ That’s aye the guide as long as you’re innocent of harm. It will be put into your mouth what is best.”

Jeanie turned upon him wistfully. “Is that a’ you have to say to me?—is that a’, faither? I want mair than that; will I take the thing just as it comes, or will I haud out o’ the way? Will I let him see me, or will I no let him see me? Will I throw it on him to acknowledge me for—a friend: or will I take it on me? See how many things I have to ask! It’s no just what to say.”

“I maun turn that ower in my mind,” said John; and there was a pause. Jeanie, after this little outburst, sat still with her head turned again toward the window, not looking at him, concealing the tears in her eyes, and the agitation of her face, which even to her father was not to be betrayed. As for John, he dropped naturally upon his familiar bench, and took up unconsciously a shoe at which he had been working. The little knock of the hammer was the natural accompaniment to his thinking. Outside, the voices of the neighbors, softened by the summer air, made a murmur of sound through which some word or two fell articulate now and then through the silence. “She kens my mind; but she will gang her ain gait,” one woman said to another; and then there arose a cry of “Tak care o’ the bairn—it’ll fa’ and break its neck,” and a rush of feet. All these sounds and a great deal more fell into the silence of the dim cottage room, where nothing but the little tap of the cobbler’s hammer disturbed the stillness. Jeanie sat very still, her hands clasped in her lap, the moisture in her eyes, turning over many thoughts in her mind. The time that had been! the day when they met in Glasgow, she a fresh country lass, half friend, half servant, in the house of her relation; he a student, half-gentleman, with his old red gown, the sign of learning, on his arm.