"Is that you, Kirstie?" he asked."Come in!""It's unco late, my dear," said Kirstie, affecting unwillingness.
"No, no," he answered, "not at all.Come in, if you want a crack.I am not sleepy, God knows!"She advanced, took a chair by the toilet table and the candle, and set the rushlight at her foot.Something - it might be in the comparative disorder of her dress, it might be the emotion that now welled in her bosom - had touched her with a wand of transformation, and she seemed young with the youth of goddesses.
"Mr.Erchie," she began, "what's this that's come to ye?""I am not aware of anything that has come," said Archie, and blushed, and repented bitterly that he had let her in.
"O, my dear, that'll no dae!" said Kirstie."It's ill to blend the eyes of love.O, Mr.Erchie, tak a thocht ere it's ower late.Ye shouldna be impatient o' the braws o' life, they'll a' come in their saison, like the sun and the rain.Ye're young yet; ye've mony cantie years afore ye.See and dinna wreck yersel' at the outset like sae mony ithers!
Hae patience - they telled me aye that was the owercome o' life - hae patience, there's a braw day coming yet.Gude kens it never cam to me;and here I am, wi' nayther man nor bairn to ca' my ain, wearying a'
folks wi' my ill tongue, and you just the first, Mr.Erchie!""I have a difficulty in knowing what you mean," said Archie.
"Weel, and I'll tell ye," she said."It's just this, that I'm feared.
I'm feared for ye, my dear.Remember, your faither is a hard man, reaping where he hasna sowed and gaithering where he hasna strawed.
It's easy speakin', but mind! Ye'll have to look in the gurly face o'm, where it's ill to look, and vain to look for mercy.Ye mind me o' a bonny ship pitten oot into the black and gowsty seas - ye're a' safe still, sittin' quait and crackin' wi' Kirstie in your lown chalmer; but whaur will ye be the morn, and in whatten horror o' the fearsome tempest, cryin' on the hills to cover ye?""Why, Kirstie, you're very enigmatical to-night - and very eloquent,"Archie put in.