Audrey

"Yea, I am glad--I and my father and mother and Ephraim--that thee is

returned to Fair View," answered Truelove. "And has thee truly no shoes of

plain and sober stuffs? These be much too gaudy."

"There's a pair of black callimanco," said the storekeeper reluctantly;

"but these of flowered silk would so become your feet, or this red-heeled

pair with the buckles, or this of fine morocco. Did you think of me every

day that I spent in Williamsburgh?"

"I prayed for thee every day," said Truelove simply,--"for thee and for

the sick man who had called thee to his side. Let me see thy callimanco

shoes. Thee knows that I may not wear these others."

The storekeeper brought the plainest footgear that his stock afforded.

"They are of a very small size,--perhaps too small. Had you not better try

them ere you buy? I could get a larger pair from Mr. Carter's store."

Truelove seated herself upon a convenient stool, and lifted her gray skirt

an inch above a slender ankle. "Perchance they may not be too small," she

said, and in despite of her training and the whiteness of her soul two

dimples made their appearance above the corners of her pretty mouth.

MacLean knelt to remove the worn shoe, but found in the shoestrings an

obstinate knot. The two had the store to themselves; for Ephraim waited

for his sister at the landing, rocking in his boat on the bosom of the

river, watching a flight of wild geese drawn like a snowy streamer across

the dark blue sky. It was late autumn, and the forest was dressed in flame

color.

"Thy fingers move so slowly that I fear thee is not well," said Truelove

kindly. "They that have nursed men with fever do often fall ill

themselves. Will thee not see a physician?"

MacLean, sanguine enough in hue, and no more gaunt of body than usual,

worked languidly on. "I trust no lowland physician," he said. "In my own

country, if I had need, I would send to the foot of Dun-da-gu for black

Murdoch, whose fathers have been physicians to the MacLeans of Duart since

the days of Galethus. The little man in this parish,--his father was a

lawyer, his grandfather a merchant; he knows not what was his

great-grandfather! There, the shoe is untied! If I came every day to your

father's house, and if your mother gave me to drink of her elder-flower

wine, and if I might sit on the sunny doorstep and watch you at your

spinning, I should, I think, recover."

He slipped upon her foot the shoe of black cloth. Truelove regarded it

gravely. "'Tis not too small, after all," she said. "And does thee not

think it more comely than these other, with their silly pomp of colored

heels and blossoms woven in the silk?" She indicated with her glance the

vainglorious row upon the bench beside her; then looked down at the little

foot in its sombre covering and sighed.