The Airlie post had dropped the letters for outlying farms at the Monypenny smithy and trudged1 on. The smith having wiped his hand on his hair, made a row of them, without looking at the addresses, on his window-sill, where, happening to be seven in number, they were almost a model of Monypenny, which is within hail of Thrums, but round the corner from it, and so has ways of its own. With the next clang on the anvil2 the middle letter fell flat, and now the likeness3 to Monypenny was absolute.
Again all the sound in the land was the melancholy5 sweet kink, kink, kink of the smith's hammer.
Across the road sat Dite Deuchars, the mole-catcher, a solitary6 figure, taking his pleasure on the dyke7. Behind him was the flour-miller's field, and beyond it the Den8, of which only some tree-tops were visible. He looked wearily east the road, but no one emerged from Thrums; he looked wearily west the road, which doubled out of sight at Aaron Latta's cottage, little more than a stone's throw distant. On the inside of Aaron's window an endless procession seemed to be passing, but it was only the warping9 mill going round. It was an empty day, but Dite, the accursed, was used to them; nothing ever happened where he was, but many things as soon as he had gone.
He yawned and looked at the houses opposite. They were all of one story; the smith's had a rusty10 plough stowed away on its roof; under a window stood a pew and bookboard, bought at the roup of an old church, and thus transformed into a garden-seat. There were many of them in Thrums that year. All the doors, except that of the smithy, were shut, until one of them blew ajar, when Dite knew at once, from the smell which crossed the road, that Blinder was in the bunk11 pulling the teeth of his potatoes. May Ann Irons, the blind man's niece, came out at this door to beat the cistern12 with a bass13, and she gave Dite a wag of her head. He was to be married to her if she could get nothing better.
By and by the Painted Lady came along the road. She was a little woman, brightly dressed, so fragile that a collie might have knocked her over with his tail, and she had a beautiful white-and-pink face, the white ending of a sudden in the middle of her neck, where it met skin of a duller color. As she tripped along with mincing14 gait, she was speaking confidentially15 to herself, but when she saw Dite grinning, she seemed, first, afraid, and then sorry for herself, and then she tried to carry it off with a giggle16, cocking her head impudently17 at him. Even then she looked childish, and a faded guilelessness, with many pretty airs and graces, still lingered about her, like innocent birds loath18 to be gone from the spot where their nest has been. When she had passed monotony again reigned19, and Dite crossed to the smithy window, though none of the letters could be for him. He could read the addresses on six of them, but the seventh lay on its back, and every time he rose on his tip-toes to squint20 down at it, the spout21 pushed his bonnet22 over his eyes.
"Smith," he cried in at the door, "to gang hame afore I ken4 wha that letter's to is more than I can do."
The smith good-naturedly brought the letter to him, and then glancing at the address was dumfounded. "God behears," he exclaimed, with a sudden look at the distant cemetery23, "it's to Double Dykes24!"
Dite also shot a look at the cemetery. "He'll never get it," he said, with mighty25 conviction.
The two men gazed at the cemetery for some time, and at last Dite muttered, "Ay, ay, Double Dykes, you was aye fond o' your joke!"
"What has that to do wi' 't?" rapped out the smith, uncomfortably.
Dite shuddered26. "Man," he said, "does that letter no bring Double Dykes back terrible vive again! If we was to see him climbing the cemetery dyke the now, and coming stepping down the fields in his moleskin waistcoat wi' the pearl buttons—"
Auchterlonie stopped him with a nervous gesture.
"But it couldna be the pearl buttons," Dite added thoughtfully, "for Betty Finlayson has been wearing them to the kirk this four year. Ay, ay, Double Dykes, that puts you farther awa' again."
The smith took the letter to a neighbor's house to ask the advice of old Irons, the blind tailor, who when he lost his sight had given himself the name of Blinder for bairns to play with.
"Make your mind easy, smith," was Blinder's counsel. "The letter is meant for the Painted Lady. What's Double Dykes? It's but the name of a farm, and we gave it to Sanders because he was the farmer. He's dead, and them that's in the house now become Double Dykes in his place."
But the Painted Lady only had the house, objected Dite; Nether27 Drumgley was farming the land, and so he was the real Double Dykes. True, she might have pretended to her friends that she had the land also.
She had no friends, the smith said, and since she came to Double Dykes from no one could find out where, though they knew her furniture was bought in Tilliedrum, she had never got a letter. Often, though, as she passed his window she had keeked sideways at the letters, as bairns might look at parlys. If he made a tinkle28 with his hammer at such times off she went at once, for she was as easily flichtered as a field of crows, that take wing if you tap your pipe on the loof of your hand. It was true she had spoken to him once; when he suddenly saw her standing30 at his smiddy door, the surprise near made him fall over his brot. She looked so neat and ladylike that he gave his hair a respectful pull before he remembered the kind of woman she was.
And what was it she said to him? Dite asked eagerly.
She had pointed31 to the letters on the window-sill, and said she, "Oh, the dear loves!" It was a queer say, but she had a bonny English word. The English word was no doubt prideful, but it melted in the mouth like a lick of sirup. She offered him sixpence for a letter, any letter he liked, but of course he refused it. Then she prigged with him just to let her hold one in her hands, for said she, bairnlike, "I used to get one every day." It so happened that one of the letters was to Mysy Bobbie; and Mysy was of so little importance that he thought there would be no harm in letting the Painted Lady hold her letter, so he gave it to her, and you should have seen her dawting it with her hand and holding it to her breast like a lassie with a pigeon. "Isn't it sweet?" she said, and before he could stop her she kissed it. She forgot it was no letter of hers, and made to open it, and then she fell a-trembling and saying she durst not read it, for you never knew whether the first words might not break your heart. The envelope was red where her lips had touched it, and yet she had an innocent look beneath the paint. When he took the letter from her, though, she called him a low, vulgar fellow for presuming to address a lady. She worked herself into a fury, and said far worse than that; a perfect guller of clarty language came pouring out of her. He had heard women curse many a time without turning a hair, but he felt wae when she did it, for she just spoke29 it like a bairn that had been in ill company.
The smith's wife, Suphy, who had joined the company, thought that men were easily taken in, especially smiths. She offered, however, to convey the letter to Double Dykes. She was anxious to see the inside of the Painted Lady's house, and this would be a good opportunity. She admitted that she had crawled to the east window of it before now, but that dour32 bairn of the Painted Lady's had seen her head and whipped down the blind.
Unfortunate Suphy! she could not try the window this time, as it was broad daylight, and the Painted Lady took the letter from her at the door. She returned crestfallen33, and for an hour nothing happened. The mole-catcher went off to the square, saying, despondently34, that nothing would happen until he was round the corner. No sooner had he rounded the corner than something did happen.
A girl who had left Double Dykes with a letter was walking quickly toward Monypenny. She wore a white pinafore over a magenta35 frock, and no one could tell her whether she was seven or eight, for she was only the Painted Lady's child. Some boys, her natural enemies, were behind; they had just emerged from the Den, and she heard them before they saw her, and at once her little heart jumped and ran off with her. But the halloo that told her she was discovered checked her running. Her teeth went into her underlip; now her head was erect36. After her came the rabble37 with a rush, flinging stones that had no mark and epithets38 that hit. Grizel disdained39 to look over her shoulder. Little hunted child, where was succor40 to come from if she could not fight for herself?
Though under the torture she would not cry out. "What's a father?" was their favorite jeer41, because she had once innocently asked this question of a false............