Scotch Marriages, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

Fourteen years passed -- not without their changes. It was a fine frosty / winter afternoon when two knots of homely men and women -- forming two / distinct coteries -- were gathered at one end of Dalroy village, where, / on the right side of the little street stood the Dalroy ‘smiddy,' and / on the left was ‘the smiddy well' -- a dipping-in-well famous throughout / the village for the excellence of its ‘tea-water. ' Horses were waiting / to be shod round the smiddy door, while their temporary owners -- dark / figures in the ruddy glow of the furnace, prepared to hold their rustic / parliament. At the centre of attraction over the way maids and matrons / took their turn in filling their cans and pitchers.

Very nearly at the same moment Jean Kinloch came in sight -- emerging / from the blue haze made up of the frost and the gloaming, while there / was heard, with the peculiar distinctness of such a sound in such / weather, the rumbling of a cart, with cart, horse, and driver still / unseen, sounding louder and louder as it drew near in the opposite / direction.

Jean had a plaid pinned over her cap, and carried a bright pitcher / dangling lightly from one wrist; she was sniffing with satisfaction / ‘the caller air,' which sent her rich blood coursing through her veins, / and yet not refusing to welcome the hot blast which met her as she / crossed in front of the smiddy door.

Of course, Jean's arrival was hailed before she was within ear-shot by / a double chorus of half-approving, half-ironical comments -- the purport / of which she could very well guess -- beginning with ‘Here comes the Miss / Fraser's Jean.'

Jean had remained in the service of the Manse family all these years, / though both the minister and his wife were dead, and the Manse was no / longer the home of the remnant of the household. Impoverished as such / remnants usually are, and consisting only of Jean's young ladies, they / could hardly have continued to live on, in genteel poverty, if Jean, / who was so closely allied to them as to be styled theirs by inalienable / possession, had not worked their double work on diminished wages.

‘Jean's true to a minute,' said another speaker, a man in the smiddy. / ‘She's nae daidler either at meat or wark.'

‘Ay, lasses, ye may stand about,' a woman at the well took up the / theme, without hearing the man's contribution to the subject. ‘Jean / Kinloch's no sma' graith -- least of a' in her ain opinion. ' It was like / a version of that climax of commendation pronounced on the virtuous / woman in Proverbs, ‘Let her own works praise her in the gates,' with / the grudging qualification that must have mingled with the praise.

Jean did not mind much either the concentrated scrutiny or the sifting / analysis of her merits and demerits, to which, with her knowledge of / the world, she knew she was exposed. Like a pillar of strength in her / self-reliance and composure, her fine presence was unimpaired by her / servant's costume, and her goodly prime untouched by any token of / decay. Though she had not risen in worldly rank and prosperity, this / was a very different Jean from the miserable lass, high-souled and / innocent as she was, who had sat in a back seat in Logan Kirk to hear / Bob Meffin cried with another woman.

Before Jean could say ‘Gude day' to anybody, while she was still coming / forward in the mingled lights of a cold primrose in the western / sky behind her, and a warm saffron from the glare of the smiddy at / her right hand, the cart -- the rumble of which had been constantly / increasing -- rattled up, bringing cart, horse, and driver into the / illumination. And even before the din of its progress had ceased or the / half-dazzled eyes could distinguish the face of the new comer, a voice, / which seemed to issue from the past, suddenly called in eager excited / tones, ‘Jean Kinloch!'

Jean turned startled, and with a shock even to her well-strung nerves, / at the imperative summons. In spite of changes in the speaker, to which / those in herself were infinitesimal, she recognised, without a moment's / hesitation, her old lover. She had not seen him since six months before / that day in Logan Kirk, on the last occasion when the two had parted / a fond loving lad and lass -- a plighted bridegroom and bride. She had / heard little of him in the interval, for his sister Eppie had married / a soldier and ‘followed the drum,' while with her departure Jean had / lost all chance of news of her recreant lover.

Taken by surprise as she was, Jean cried out with shaken accents, in / turn, ‘Bob Meffin! ' Then she recalled, as any true woman would have / recalled, instantaneously, the whole circumstances, the scene, the / spectators. Some of them had known the two in their green youth, and / were doubtless speculating already, with keen interest and a sense of / the ridiculous, how Jean Kinloch would meet Bob Meffin now that the / pair had reached the years of discretion -- after what had once been / between them, after the falseness of Bob which had separated them.

Jean was equal to the occasion; she stepped up to the cart, to which / Bob sat nailed, with the intention of speaking to him, and doing her / part in the interchange of such light questions and answers, as might / be expected between old acquaintances who had known each other well / in youth, and who happened to encounter each other in later years. As / to any nearer relation which had ever existed between them, Jean's / attitude showed that she, at least, meant to behave as if she had / forgotten it as utterly as the most trifling incident of her girlish / days.