The Little Minister Part 34

"I am sorry I told you that," the gypsy said, regretfully.

"Tell me how you got it," Gavin insisted, his face now hard.

"Now, you see, we are quarrelling."

"I must know."

"Must know! You forget yourself," she said haughtily.

"No, but I have forgotten myself too long. Where did you get that ring?"

"Good afternoon to you," said the Egyptian, lifting her pans.

"It is not good afternoon," he cried, detaining her. "It is good-bye for ever, unless you answer me."

"As you please," she said. "I will not tell you where I got my ring.

It is no affair of yours."

"Yes, Babbie, it is."

She was not, perhaps, greatly grieved to hear him say so, for she made no answer.

"You are no gypsy," he continued, suspiciously.

"Perhaps not," she answered, again taking the pans.

"This dress is but a disguise."

"It may be. Why don't you go away and leave me?"

"I am going," he replied, wildly. "I will have no more to do with you.

Formerly I pitied you, but----"

He could not have used a word more calculated to rouse the Egyptian's ire, and she walked away with her head erect. Only once did she look back, and it was to say--

"This is prudence--now."

Chapter Nineteen.

CIRc.u.mSTANCES LEADING TO THE FIRST SERMON IN APPROVAL OF WOMEN.

A young man thinks that he alone of mortals is impervious to love, and so the discovery that he is in it suddenly alters his views of his own mechanism. It is thus not unlike a rap on the funny-bone. Did Gavin make this discovery when the Egyptian left him? Apparently he only came to the brink of it and stood blind. He had driven her from him for ever, and his sense of loss was so acute that his soul cried out for the cure rather than for the name of the malady.

In time he would have realised what had happened, but time was denied him, for just as he was starting for the mud house Babbie saved his dignity by returning to him. It was not her custom to fix her eyes on the ground as she walked, but she was doing so now, and at the same time swinging the empty pans. Doubtless she had come back for more water, in the belief that Gavin had gone. He p.r.o.nounced her name with a sense of guilt, and she looked up surprised, or seemingly surprised, to find him still there.

"I thought you had gone away long ago," she said stiffly.

"Otherwise," asked Gavin the dejected, "you would not have come back to the well?"

"Certainly not."

"I am very sorry. Had you waited another moment I should have been gone."

This was said in apology, but the wilful Egyptian chose to change its meaning.

"You have no right to blame me for disturbing you," she declared with warmth.

"I did not. I only----"

"You could have been a mile away by this time. Nanny wanted more water."

Babbie scrutinised the minister sharply as she made this statement.

Surely her conscience troubled her, for on his not answering immediately she said, "Do you presume to disbelieve me? What could have made me return except to fill the pans again?"

"Nothing," Gavin admitted eagerly, "and I a.s.sure you----"

Babbie should have been grateful to his denseness, but it merely set her mind at rest.

"Say anything against me you choose," she told him. "Say it as brutally as you like, for I won't listen."

She stopped to hear his response to that, and she looked so cold that it almost froze on Gavin's lips.

"I had no right," he said, dolefully, "to speak to you as I did."

"You had not," answered the proud Egyptian. She was looking away from him to show that his repentance was not even interesting to her.

However, she had forgotten already not to listen.

"What business is it of mine?" asked Gavin, amazed at his late presumption, "whether you are a gypsy or no?"

"None whatever."

"And as for the ring----"

Here he gave her an opportunity of allowing that his curiosity about the ring was warranted. She declined to help him, however, and so he had to go on.

"The ring is yours," he said, "and why should you not wear it?"

"Why, indeed?"

"I am afraid I have a very bad temper."

He paused for a contradiction, but she nodded her head in agreement.

"And it is no wonder," he continued, "that you think me a--a brute."