250 The Little Minister

Two frail arms went round the Egyptian, and
Babbie rested her head on the old woman’s
breast. But do you think it could have happened
had not Nanny loved a weaver two score years
before ?

And now Nanny has set off for church, and
Babbie is alone in the mud house. Some will
pity her not at all, this girl who was a dozen
women in the hour, and all made of impulses
that would scarce stand still to be photographed.
To attempt to picture her at any time until now
would have been like chasing a spirit that changes
to something else as your arms clasp it; yet she
has always seemed a pathetic little figure to me.
If I understand Babbie at all, it is, I think,
because I loved Margaret, the only woman I
have ever known well, and one whose nature was
not, like the Egyptian’s, complex, but most
simple, as if God had told her only to be good.
Throughout my life since she came into it she
has been to me a glass in which many things are
revealed that I could not have learned save
through her, and something of all womankind,
even of bewildering Babbie, I seem to know
because I knew Margaret.

No woman is so bad but we may rejoice when
her heart thrills to love, for then God has her
by the hand. There is no love but this. She
may dream of what love is, but it is only of a
sudden that she knows. Babbie, who was without
a guide from her baby days, had dreamed but little
of it, hearing its name given to another thing.
She had been born wild and known no home;
no one had touched her heart except to strike