"No, no, no, grandfather!" she said. "Of course not. Shall I ask Mrs. MacGill to come up, to read to you in the Scotch way?"
"No, no one but you, Maisrie—no one but you—perhaps if you take the CXXVI. Psalm—’When Sion’s bondage God turned back, as men that dreamed were we’—I mind, they used to sing that to the tune of _Kilmarnock_—and the young women’s voices sounded beautiful. But you’re not vexed, Maisrie!—for I did not mean any unkindness to ye, my dear——"
"No, no, grandfather," she said; and she turned to this other Psalm, and read it to him; and even after that it was some time before she could assure him that she had not been in the least hurt.
Two more of those long and anxious days went by; the fever waxing and waning by turns; but all the time the strength of that once powerful frame was slowly ebbing away. For one thing, his mind was well content. He had no more anxiety about Maisrie; he appeared to regard her future as well assured. He lay quietly murmuring to himself; and they could make out, from chance sentences here and there, that he was going over his boyhood’s days again—bird’s-nesting in the spring woods, making swaying seats out of the shelving branches of the beeches, guddling for trout in the small hill burns. An old refrain seemed to haunt him—
’Beyond thee, dearie, beyond thee, dearie, And O to be lying beyond thee: O sweetly, soundly, weel may he sleep, That’s laid in the bed beyond thee.’
’_Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde_’: that phrase also returned again and again. And then he would go back to his school-days, and tell Maisrie about a little patch of garden that had been given all to himself; how he had watched the yellow spears of the crocuses pierce the dry earth, and the green buds begin to show on the currant-bushes; how he had planted scarlet-runners, and stuck the wands in, and trained the young shoots; how he had waited for the big red globes of the peonies to unroll; how he had white monkshood, and four distinct colours of columbine. Then his pets; his diversions; his terrible adventures—half drowned in a mill-dam—lost in a snowstorm on Laidlaw moor—the horrors of a certain churchyard which he had sometimes to pass, alone, on the dark winter evenings. Maisrie did not seek to interrupt him. There was no agitation in these wandering reminiscences. Nay, they seemed to soothe him; and sometimes he sank into an altogether dozing state.