The story of the poor girl's misfortune soon spread abroad. It became the talk of the village; and many a burning face, and many an agonising pang, it cost her as she passed along, and heard the sneers, and taunts, and heartless jests to which that misfortune subjected her.
"The graceless cutty!" said one--and we must here remark that the merciless persecutions of this kind to which she was exposed proceeded almost entirely from those of her own sex--"nae better could happen her wi' her dressin and her airs. No a madam in a' the land could be at mair pains snoodin her hair than she was."
"Atweel, that's true," said a second; "and see what she has made o't, the vain, silly thing!"
"Made o't!" exclaimed another of these vulgar and heartless traducers; "my certie, she'll mak weel o't, I warrant ye. Young Wellwood 'll gie her silks and satins by the wab, and siller in gowpens. She'll no want--tak my word for that. We maun toil late and early, cummers, for our scanty mouthfu, and our bits o' duds; while the like o' her eats and drinks o' the best, without ever fylin her fingers."
"This'll bring doun her pride, I'm thinkin," said a fourth. "I aye thocht she wad hae a fa', and was ne'er owre fond o' oor Mary gaun wi' her. Folk speak o' her beauty; but, for my part, I never could see ony beauty about her."
"Nor me either," chimed in a fifth; "I aye thocht her a puir, glaikit, silly-looking thing."
Much of such conversation as this the poor unfortunate girl frequently overheard; and much more of a similar kind was said which she did not hear. In short, there was not one, at least of her own sex, who expressed the smallest sympathy for her unhappy condition, or felt for her misfortune--not one who attempted to soothe her sorrows, or to lighten the burden of the poor girl's miseries--not one to treat her error with the lenity which their own liability to deviate from the straight path of moral rectitude ought to have inspired:--no, the poor girl's persecutors seemed to think that the abuse and defamation of her character shed an additional lustre on their own, and that, by her fall, they themselves were exalted. Strangers were they to the god-like sentiments expressed by him who says--