a vengeance or ye can win back! Weel, I have nae thing to do wi' it -it's no good taste." Clem, whose purse had thus metamorphosed his sister, and who was not insensible to the advertisement, had come to the rescue with a "Hoot, woman! What do you ken of good taste that has never been to the ceety?" And Hob, looking on the girl with pleased smiles, as she timidly displayed her finery in the midst of the dark kitchen, had thus ended the dispute: "The cutty looks weel," he had said, "and it's no very like rain.Wear them the day, hizzie; but it's no a thing to make a practice o'." In the breasts of her rivals, coming to the kirk very conscious of white under-linen, and their faces splendid with much soap, the sight of the toilet had raised a storm of varying emotion, from the mere unenvious admiration that was expressed in a long-drawn "Eh!" to the angrier feeling that found vent in an emphatic "Set her up!" Her frock was of straw-coloured jaconet muslin, cut low at the bosom and short at the ankle, so as to display her DEMI-BROQUINS of Regency violet, crossing with many straps upon a yellow cobweb stocking.According to the pretty fashion in which our grandmothers did not hesitate to appear, and our great-aunts went forth armed for the pursuit and capture of our great-uncles, the dress was drawn up so as to mould the contour of both breasts, and in the nook between, a cairngorm brooch maintained it.Here, too, surely in a very enviable position, trembled the nosegay of primroses.She wore on her shoulders - or rather on her back and not her shoulders, which it scarcely passed - a French coat of sarsenet, tied in front with Margate braces, and of the same colour with her violet shoes.About her face clustered a disorder of dark ringlets, a little garland of yellow French roses surmounted her brow, and the whole was crowned by a village hat of chipped straw.Amongst all the rosy and all the weathered faces that surrounded her in church, she glowed like an open flower - girl and raiment, and the cairngorm that caught the daylight and returned it in a fiery flash, and the threads of bronze and gold that played in her hair.
Archie was attracted by the bright thing like a child.He looked at her again and yet again, and their looks crossed.The lip was lifted from her little teeth.He saw the red blood work vividly under her tawny skin.Her eye, which was great as a stag's, struck and held his gaze.
He knew who she must be - Kirstie, she of the harsh diminutive, his housekeeper's niece, the sister of the rustic prophet, Gib - and he found in her the answer to his wishes.
Christina felt the shock of their encountering glances, and seemed to rise, clothed in smiles, into a region of the vague and bright.But the gratification was not more exquisite than it was brief.She looked away abruptly, and immediately began to blame herself for that abruptness.
She knew what she should have done, too late - turned slowly with her nose in the air.And meantime his look was not removed, but continued to play upon her like a battery of cannon constantly aimed, and now seemed to isolate her alone with him, and now seemed to uplift her, as on a pillory, before the congregation.For Archie continued to drink her in with his eyes, even as a wayfarer comes to a well-head on a mountain, and stoops his face, and drinks with thirst unassuageable.In the cleft of her little breasts the fiery eye of the topaz and the pale florets of primrose fascinated him.He saw the breasts heave, and the flowers shake with the heaving, and marvelled what should so much discompose the girl.And Christina was conscious of his gaze - saw it, perhaps, with the dainty plaything of an ear that peeped among her ringlets; she was conscious of changing colour, conscious of her unsteady breath.Like a creature tracked, run down, surrounded, she sought in a dozen ways to give herself a countenance.She used her handkerchief - it was a really fine one - then she desisted in a panic:
"He would only think I was too warm." She took to reading in the metrical psalms, and then remembered it was sermon-time.Last she put a "sugar-bool" in her mouth, and the next moment repented of the step.It was such a homely-like thing! Mr.Archie would never be eating sweeties in kirk; and, with a palpable effort, she swallowed it whole, and her colour flamed high.At this signal of distress Archie awoke to a sense of his ill-behaviour.What had he been doing? He had been exquisitely rude in church to the niece of his housekeeper; he had stared like a lackey and a libertine at a beautiful and modest girl.It was possible, it was even likely, he would be presented to her after service in the kirk-yard, and then how was he to look? And there was no excuse.He had marked the tokens of her shame, of her increasing indignation, and he was such a fool that he had not understood them.Shame bowed him down, and he looked resolutely at Mr.Torrance; who little supposed, good, worthy man, as he continued to expound justification by faith, what was his true business: to play the part of derivative to a pair of children at the old game of falling in love.
Christina was greatly relieved at first.It seemed to her that she was clothed again.She looked back on what had passed.All would have been right if she had not blushed, a silly fool! There was nothing to blush at, if she HAD taken a sugar-bool.Mrs.MacTaggart, the elder's wife in St.Enoch's, took them often.And if he had looked at her, what was more natural than that a young gentleman should look at the best-dressed girl in church? And at the same time, she knew far otherwise, she knew there was nothing casual or ordinary in the look, and valued herself on its memory like a decoration.Well, it was a blessing he had found something else to look at! And presently she began to have other thoughts.It was necessary, she fancied, that she should put herself right by a repetition of the incident, better managed.If the wish was father to the thought, she did not know or she would not recognise it.