“Give it me, Nanny.”

“It winna come off my finger.”  She gloated over it, nursed it, kissed it.

“I must have it, Nanny.”

The Egyptian put her hand lightly on the old woman’s shoulder, and Nanny jumped up, pressing the ring to her bosom.  Her face had become cunning and ugly; she retreated into a corner.

“Nanny, give me back my ring or I will take it from you.”

The cruel light of the diamond was in Nanny’s eyes for a moment, and then, shuddering, she said, “Tak your ring awa, tak it out o’ my sicht.”

In the meantime Gavin was trudging home gloomily composing his second sermon against women.  I have already given the entry in my own diary for that day:  this is his:—­“Notes on Jonah.  Exchanged vol. xliii., ‘European Magazine,’ for Owen’s ‘Justification’ (per flying stationer).  Began Second Samuel.  Visited Nanny Webster.”  There is no mention of the Egyptian.

CHAPTER XVI.

Continued misbehaviour of the Egyptian woman.

By the following Monday it was known at many looms that something sat heavily on the Auld Licht minister’s mind.  On the previous day he had preached his second sermon of warning to susceptible young men, and his first mention of the word “woman” had blown even the sleepy heads upright.  Now he had salt fish for breakfast, and on clearing the table Jean noticed that his knife and fork were uncrossed.  He was observed walking into a gooseberry bush by Susy Linn, who possessed the pioneer spring-bed of Thrums, and always knew when her man jumped into it by suddenly finding herself shot to the ceiling.  Lunan, the tinsmith, and two women, who had the luck to be in the street at the time, saw him stopping at Dr. McQueen’s door, as if about to knock, and then turning smartly away.  His hat blew off in the school wynd, where a wind wanders ever, looking for hats, and he chased it so passionately that Lang Tammas went into Allardyce’s smiddy to say—­

“I dinna like it.  Of course he couldna afford to lose his hat, but he should hae run after it mair reverently.”

Gavin, indeed, was troubled.  He had avoided speaking of the Egyptian to his mother.  He had gone to McQueen’s house to ask the doctor to accompany him to the Kaims, but with the knocker in his hand he changed his mind, and now he was at the place of meeting alone.  It was a day of thaw, nothing to be heard from a distance but the swish of curling-stones through water on Rashie-bog, where the match for the eldership was going on.  Around him.  Gavin saw only dejected firs with drops of water falling listlessly from them, clods of snow, and grass that rustled as if animals were crawling through it.  All the roads were slack.

I suppose no young man to whom society has not become a cheap thing can be in Gavin’s position, awaiting the coming of an attractive girl, without giving thought to what he should say to her.  When in the pulpit or visiting the sick, words came in a rush to the little minister, but he had to set his teeth to determine what to say to the Egyptian.