8
I found myself on the little stool by the fireside and the hamely sound of my mother's wheel humhumming in my lug, like a gentle lullaby.
Every noise I heard flustered me, but I calmed in time, though I went to my bed without my supper. When I was driving out the gaislings to the grass on the next morn, who was it my ill fate to meet but the blacksmith, "OH, Mansie," said Jamie Coom, "are ye gann to take me for your best man? I hear you are to be cried in the kirk on Sunday?"
"Me!" answered I, shaking and staring.
"Yes!" said he, "Jess the minister's maid told me last night, that you had been giving up your name at the manse. Ay, it's ower true—for she showed me the apples ye gied her in a present. This is a bonny story, Mansie, my man, and you only at your 'prenticeship yet."
Terror and despair had struck me dumb. I stood as still and as stiff as a web of buckram. My tongue was tied, and I could not contradict him Jamie faulded his arms, and gaed away whistling, turning every now and then his sooty face over his shoulder, and mostly sticking his tune, as he could not keep his mouth screwed for laughing. What would I not have given to have laughed to!
There was no time to be lost; this was the Saturday. The next rising sun would shine on the Sabbath. Ah, what it case I was in! I could mostly have drowned myself, had I not been frighted. What could I do? My love had vanished like lightning: but oh, I was in a terrible gliff! Instead of gundy, I sold my thrums to Mrs Walnut for a penny, with which I bought at the counter a sheet of paper and a pen; so that in the afternoon I wrote out a letter to the minister, telling him what I had been given to hear, and begging him, for the sake of mercy, not to believe Jess's word, as I was notable to keep a wife, and as she was a leeing gipsy.
