"Five pounds," said Thomas.
"Five pounds! Five pounds to go to London, and look for a runaway girl with! Good heavens, man, that'll no keep ye a week. Ye'll starve, Wanless, lang afore you find the lassie, if ye ever find her. God, man, if that's a' you can scrape for the job, you'd better bide where ye are?"
"That I cannot do," Thomas answered. "Starve or not, I must go and seek my child."
The farmer looked at him for a moment, gave a grunt of amazement, and turned on his heel, with the remark—
"Well, well, Wanless, a wilful man must hae his way, they say, and you must have yours, I suppose, but, faith, I doubt you'll rue your folly."
And with that consolatory observation, Thomas parted from a master whom he had learnt to respect, for the rough outside hid a not unkindly nature.
The liking was mutual, and was not on Robson's part lessened by the refusal of his man to take the two sovereigns. The sturdy independence of his hind was a thing so uncommon, that it excited his admiration, and stirred his somewhat dulled natural feelings of generosity. Many a time during the absence of her husband, Mrs. Wanless had cause to bless the "Missus o' Whitbury Farm" for acts of unostentatious kindness which that motherly Scotchwoman needed, it must be said, little prompting to perform. On her husband's suggestion, she called one day at the cottage, and at once took an interest in the pale, sad woman, and the little child. Thereafter, many little presents of milk, and of butter and cheese, found their way to the cottage from Whitbury Farm. And what Mrs. Wanless felt most grateful of all for, was that these things were never sent to her by servants, but were brought either by Mrs. Robson herself, or by one of her daughters. The farmer's wife did not try to make Mrs. Wanless feel that she was a miserable dependent upon her bounty. She had not in that respect, as yet, acquired English manners. In the Lowlands of Scotland, I am told, there is no abject class like the English agricultural labourer, and these hard Scotch farmer folks had still to learn that their hinds were not human beings of like passions and feelings with themselves.