ng at all what we call fine. She looked
sixty, and had on a mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon; her
silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark-gray eyes--eyes such as one
sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also
of the overcoming of it; her eyebrows black and delicate, and her
mouth firm, patient, and contented, which few mouths ever are.

As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful countenance, or one more
subdued to settled quiet. "Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John,
the young doctor; Rab's friend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you,
doctor." She smiled and made a movement, but said nothing, and
prepared to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had
Solomon, in all his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his
palace gate, he could not have done it more daintily, more tenderly,
more like a gentleman than James, the Howland carrier, when he
lifted down Ailie, his wife. The contrast of his small, swarthy,
weather-beaten, keen, worldly face to hers--pale, subdued, and
beautiful--was something wonderful. Rab looked on concerned and
puzzled, but ready for anything that might turn up, were it to
strangle the nurse, the porter, or even me. Ailie and he seemed great
friends.

"As I was sayin', she's got a kind o' trouble in her breest, doctor;
wull ye tak' a look at it?" We walked into the consulting-room, all
four; Rab, grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if
cause should be shown, willing also to be the reverse on the same
terms. Ailie sat down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief
round her neck, and, without a word, showed me her right breast. I
looked at it and examined it carefully, she and James watching me, and
Rab eying all three. What could I say? There it was, that had once
been so soft, so shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful, so
"full of all blessed condition," hard as a stone, a centre of horrid
pain, making that pale face, with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes,
and its sweet, resolved mouth, express the full measure of suffering
overcome. Why was that gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lovable,
condemned by God to bear such a burden?

I got her away to bed. "May Rab and me bide?" said James. "_You_ may;
and Rab, if he will behave himself." "I'se warrant he's do that,
doctor." And in slunk the faithful beast. There are no such dogs now.
He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have said, he was brindled, and gray
like R