Only Dandie, waiting till the last, caught Kirstie by the arm. "When
did ye begin to dander in pink hosen, Mistress Elliott?" he whispered
slyly.

She looked down; she was one blush. "I maun have forgotten to change
them," said she; and went into prayers in her turn with a troubled mind,
between anxiety as to whether Dand should have observed her yellow
stockings at church, and should thus detect her in a palpable falsehood,
and shame that she had already made good his prophecy. She remembered
the words of it, how it was to be when she had gotten a jo, and that
that would be for good and evil. "Will I have gotten my jo now?" she
thought with a secret rapture.

And all through prayers, where it was her principal business to conceal
the pink stockings from the eyes of the indifferent Mrs. Hob - and all
through supper, as she made a feint of eating and sat at the table
radiant and constrained - and again when she had left them and come into
her chamber, and was alone with her sleeping niece, and could at last
lay aside the armour of society - the same words sounded within her, the
same profound note of happiness, of a world all changed and renewed, of
a day that had been passed in Paradise, and of a night that was to be
heaven opened. All night she seemed to be conveyed smoothly upon a
shallow stream of sleep and waking, and through the bowers of Beulah;
all night she cherished to her heart that exquisite hope; and if,
towards morning, she forgot it a while in a more profound
unconsciousness, it was to catch again the rainbow thought with her
first moment of awaking.