She stopped, but he was silent.  “That is all now,” she said, softly; and she waited for him to speak if he chose.  He turned his head away sharply, and Miss Ailie mistook his meaning.  If she gave one little sob—­Well, it was but one, and then all the glory of womanhood came rushing to her aid, and it unfurled its flag over her, whispering, “Now, sweet daughter, now, strike for me,” and she raised her head gallantly, and for a moment in her life the old school-mistress was a queen.  “I shall ring for tea,” she said, quietly and without a tremor; “do you think there is anything so refreshing after a walk as a dish of tea?”

She rang the bell, but its tinkle only made Gavinia secede farther into the cellar, and that summons has not been answered to this day, and no one seems to care, for while the wires were still vibrating Mr. McLean had asked Miss Ailie to forgive him and marry him.

Miss Ailie said she would, but, “Oh,” she cried, “ten years ago it might have been my Kitty.  I would that it had been Kitty!”

Miss Ailie was dear to him now, and ten years is a long time, and men are vain.  Mr. McLean replied, quite honestly, “I am not sure that I did not always like you best,” but that hurt her, and he had to unsay the words.

“I was a thoughtless fool ten years ago,” he said, bitterly, and Miss Ailie’s answer came strangely from such timid lips.  “Yes, you were!” she exclaimed, passionately, and all the wrath, long pent up, with very different feelings, in her gentle bosom, against the man who should have adored her Kitty, leapt at that reproachful cry to her mouth and eyes, and so passed out of her forever.

CHAPTER XXIX

TOMMY THE SCHOLAR

So Miss Ailie could be brave, but what a poltroon she was also!  Three calls did she make on dear friends, ostensibly to ask how a cold was or to instruct them in a new device in Shetland wool, but really to announce that she did not propose keeping school after the end of the term—­because—­in short, Mr. Ivie McLean and she—­that is he—­and so on.  But though she had planned it all out so carefully, with at least three capital ways of leading up to it, and knew precisely what they would say, and pined to hear them say it, on each occasion shyness conquered and she came away with the words unspoken.  How she despised herself, and how Mr. McLean laughed!  He wanted to take the job off her hands by telling the news to Dr. McQueen, who could be depended on to spread it through the town, and Miss Ailie discovered with horror that his simple plan was to say, “How are you, doctor?  I just looked in to tell you that Miss Ailie and I are to be married.  Good afternoon.”  The audacity of this captivated Miss Ailie even while it outraged her sense of decency.  To Redlintie went Mr. McLean, and returning next day drew from his pocket something which he put on Miss Ailie’s finger, and then she had the idea of taking off her