So she will be, indeed!" says Catriona. "But I will never forgive her
for all that. I will never, never forgive her, and let me hear tell of
her no more."

"Well," said I, "this beats all that ever came to my knowledge; and I
wonder that you can indulge yourself in such bairnly whims. Here is a
young lady that was the best friend in the world to the both of us, that
learned us how to dress ourselves, and in a great manner how to behave,
as anyone can see that knew us both before and after."

But Catriona stopped square in the midst of the highway.

"It is this way of it," said she. "Either you will go on to speak of
her, and I will go back to yon town, and let come of it what God
pleases! Or else you will do me that politeness to talk of other
things."

I was the most nonplussed person in this world; but I bethought me that
she depended altogether on my help, that she was of the frail sex and
not so much beyond a child, and it was for me to be wise for the pair of
us.

"My dear girl," said I, "I can make neither head nor tails of this; but
God forbid that I should do anything to set you on the jee. As for
talking of Miss Grant I have no such a mind to it, and I believe it was
yourself began it. My only design (if I took you up at all) was for your
own improvement, for I hate the very look of injustice. Not that I do
not wish you to have a good pride and a nice female delicacy; they
become you well; but here you show them to excess."

"Well, then, have you done?" said she.

"I have done," said I.

"A very good thing," said she, and we went on again, but now in silence.

It was an eerie employment to walk in the gross night, beholding only
shadows and hearing nought but our own steps. At first, I believe our
hearts burned against each other with a deal of enmity; but the darkness
and the cold, and the silence, which only the cocks sometimes
interrupted, or sometimes the farmyard dogs, had pretty soon brought
down our pride to the dust; and for my own particular, I would have
jumped at any decent opening for speech.

Before the day peeped, came on a warmish rain, and the frost was all
wiped away from among our feet. I took my cloak to her and sought to hap
her in the same; she bade me, rather impatiently, to keep it.

"Indeed and I will do no such thing," said I. "Here am I, a great, ugly
lad that has seen all kinds of weather, and here are you a tender,
pretty maid! My dear, you would not put me to a shame?"