Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/227

Rh perched on a nose something of the colour and shape of a lobster's claw assisted her in drawing conclusions from the appearance of a stranger.

I heard the tittering and whispering of the maidens; but the voice of the old woman aspired to something more elevated than a whisper, and mingled counsel and scolding in equal quantities.

"A fisher, indeed!" responded the sibyl to the queries of one of her greener companions; "and what's he come to fish?—a snow-white web from the bottom of our caldron? Ay, ay, 'cause he has ae handsome leg, and something of a merry ee—mind ye, I say na twa—ye christen his calling honest. He's a long black fallow with a tinker look, and I'll warrant there's no his marrow from Longtown to Lochmaben for robbing hen-roosts; and yet I shouldna wonder, Mysie Dinwoodie, if ye held tryst with that strange lad for a whole night with no witness save the blessed moon."

"Hout now, Prudence Caird," said the fair-haired girl, "ye are thinking on the mistake ye made with Pate Johnstone of Dargavel, and how ye failed to mend it with Dick Bell o' Cowfloshan."

The secret history of the old woman's unhappy loves was interrupted by the appearance of a very handsome girl, who, bearing refreshments for her menials, glided through the grove, with a foot so light and white, a look so sweet, a high white forehead, shaded with locks clustering over the temples, and with eyes so large, so bright, and blue—that she seemed a personification of the shepherd maidens of Scottish song. Two fine moorland dogs accompanied her: they sat as she sat, stood as she stood, and moved as she moved. She withdrew from her companions, and approached where I stood, with a look at once so sweet and demure, that, trespasser as I imagined myself to be, I was emboldened to abide a rebuke, which I hoped would come softened from such sweet lips. Though apparently examining the progress of her linen towards perfect whiteness, and approaching me rather by a sidelong than a direct step, I observed, by a quick glance of her eye, that I was included in her calculations. I was saved the confusion which a bashful person feels in addressing a stranger by a voice from the river bank, which, ascending from a small knoll of green willows, sang with singular wildness some snatches of an old ballad.