“That is very true, too,” he said, with a smile; “and now you can go away and tell John to bring me my wine and my biscuit. The doctor and you together have wasted my morning.” He drew his book toward him again as he dismissed her. This was the only “good sign” that Bell saw in her master; and her face was so grave when she went down-stairs that John paused in his preparation for his master’s simple luncheon with a sombre triumph.
“Aweel? You’ll not tell me I’m an auld fule again,” John said.
“Then I’ll tell you you’re an auld raven, a prophet o’ evil,” said his wife, with vehemence. “Gang up the stairs this moment and gie the maister his drop o’ wine; he’s crying for that and his biscuit, and there he might sit, and you never take the trouble to gang near him. Oh ay!” said Bell, dreamily--“oh ay! The bairn divined it, and the auld man saw it, and the doctor sees it too, though he winna say sae; and Bell’s the last to ken! In our ordinar, just in our ordinar! but them that has een can see the end.”
However, though this foreboding gathered force by the adhesion of one after another, it was not as yet any more than a foreboding, and the days went on very quietly without any new event. The next Sunday, on which Sir Ludovic had intended to go to church, was very wet, and it was not until a fortnight after his first announcement of his intention, that the old carriage was at last got out, and the horses, which had been making themselves useful in the farm, harnessed. They were not a very splendid or high-spirited pair, as may be conceived, but they answered the purpose well enough. It was a true summer Sunday, the sunshine more warm, the air more still, than on any other day. The roses were fading off the hedge-rows, the green corn was beginning to wave and rustle in the fields; the country groups that came from afar on every visible road, not all to the kirk on the hill (for there was a Free Church in the “laigh toun,” not to speak of “the chapel,” which was Baptist, and had a dozen members, like the Apostles), were sprinkled with light dresses in honor of the season, and all was still in the villages save for this gathering and animated crowd. The big old coach, with its old occupant, called forth much excitement in the Kirkton. Carriages and fine people had failed to the parish church.