Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/101

RV 33 (Rh) 'I have had that wad sober me or ony ane,' said the matron. 'Aweel, Tibb, a lass like me wasna to lack wooers, for I wasna sae ill-favoured that the tikes wad bark after me.'

'How should that be,' said Tibb, 'and you sic a weel-favoured woman to this day?'

'Fie, fie, cummer,' said the matron of Glendearg, hitching her seat of honour, in her turn, a little nearer to the cuttiestool on which Tibb was seated; 'weel-favoured is past my time of day; but I might pass then, for I wasna sae tocherless but what I had a bit land at my breast-lace. My father was portioner of Little-dearg.'

'Ye hae tell'd me that before,' said Tibb; 'but anent the Hallowe'en?'

'Aweel, aweel, I had mail' joes than ane, but I favoured nane o' them; and sae, at Hallowe'en, Father Nicolas the cellarer—he was cellarer before this father, Father Clement, that now is—was cracking his nuts and drinking his brown beer with us, and as blithe as might be, and they would have me try a cantrip to ken wha suld wed me: and the monk said there was nae ill in it, and if there was, he uould assoil me for it. And wha but I into the barn to winnow my three weights o' naething—sair, sair my mind misgave me for fear of wrang-doing and wrang-suffering baith; but I had ay a bauld spirit. I had not winnowed the last weight clean out, and the moon was shining bright upon the floor, when in stalked the presence of my dear Simon Glendinning, that is now happy. I never saw him plainer in my life than I did that moment; he held up an arrow as he passed me, and I swarf'd awa wi' fright. Muckle wark there was to bring me to mysell again, and sair they tried to make me believe it was a trick of Father Nicolas and Simon between them, and that the arrow was to signify Cupid's shaft, as the Father called it; and mony a time Simon wad threep it to me after I was married—gude man, he liked not it should be said that he was seen out o' the body! But mark the end o' it, Tibb; we were married, and the grey-goose wing was the death o' him after a'!'

'As it has been of ower mony brave men,' said Tibb; 'I wish there wasna sic a bird as a goose in the wide warld, forby the decking that we hae at the burn-side.'

'But tell me, Tibb,' said Dame Glendinning, 'what does Rh