'How beautiful,' whispered awestruck Alison, who had never owned a ring in her life. ''Tis much too grand for me, sir, and I--I can give you nothing back.'
'Give me a curl,' said Herries, half in jest. 'The true lover's gift.'
'Would you really like one?' cried Alison, and with characteristic absence of vanity she seized upon one of her finest, and caught up a pair of scissors for the sacrifice.
'Nay, now, not that one,' Herries laughed, forcibly intervening. 'You'd spoil the bonny bunch! She here, a baby one that hides behind your ear--you'd never miss it.' Alison snipped off the 'baby one,' tied it up with a thread of silk from Nancy's basket, and twisted it in a piece of paper, all with her own matter-of-fact and literal air, that made Herries laugh again, and love her more.
'There, sir,' she said. 'I would 'twere a handsomer gift. You know,' she added, 'they say 'tis unlucky to give hair--it means "farewell."'
'Ah, but we're so prosaic a pair, love,' said Herries, half-mocking. 'There's no romantic ill-luck in store for us, be sure. We leave that to the high-flyers.'
Then they went to the window again and bent their heads over the ring. It is hardly fair to spy upon a rising and respectable young lawyer in his softer moments. But if, in the old days at The Mains, Kirsty, the dairy-maid, had had a lover who put an arm around her waist, Alison, as her own good mother might have put it, was 'upsides with her' now.
She and Herries, indeed, were so absorbed in the ring and in each other's company that they heard no sounds outside the little room. Their backs were towards the door, which had an awkward trick of sometimes swinging open unnoticed, when not securely latched. It had swung open now to some movement of the crazy old tenement, and all unknown to the lovers, a figure stood motionless on the threshold. It was a towering figure, but it had a canny step, to which additional stealthiness had been imparted by the simple expedient of removing the stout shoes from the heavy feet. Too often had Robbie Burns crept to clandestine meetings not to know that 'tis pity on such occasions to disturb the neighbours with unseemly clatter on the stairs.
He could see well into the room, for the fire had blazed up brightly, and he perceived perfectly the two figures and their attitude--recognising one.