COUSIN' PHILLIS. 113
o' nights when she used to be abed and asleep? I sleep next room to her, and hear her plain as can be. What makes her come in panting and ready to drop into that chair," — nodding to one close to the door, — "and it's 'Oh! Betty, some water, please?' That's the way she comes in now, when she used to come back as fresh and bright as she went out. If yon friend o' yours has played her false, he's a deal for t' answer for; she's a lass who's as sweet and as sound as a nut, and the very apple of her father's eye, and of her mother' too, only wi' her she ranks second to th' minister. You'll have to look after yon chap, for I, for one, will stand no wrong to our Phillis."
What was I to do, or to say? I wanted to justify Holdsworth, to keep Phillis's secret, and to pacify the woman all in the same breath. I did not take the best course, I'm afraid.
"I don't believe Holdsworth ever spoke a word of — of love to her in all his life. I'm sure he didn't."
"Ay, ay! but there's eyes, and there's hands, as well as tongues; and a man has two o' th' one and but one o' t'other."
"And she's so young; do you suppose her parents would not have seen it?"
"Well! if you axe me that, I'll say out boldly, 'No.' They've called her 'the child' so long — 'the child' is always their name for her when they talk on her between themselves, as if never anybody else had a ewe-lamb before them — that she's grown up to be a woman under their very eyes, and they look on her still as if she were in her long clothes. And you ne'er heard on a man falling in love wi' a babby in long clothes!"
