“Am I then? I am not. But a bad man needs a gridiron and brimstone; he’ll get it yet.”
“Oh, Polly!” Agnes’s shocked voice exclaimed again.
“Never you mind,” Polly went on; “he’ll get his deserts yet.” She sat for some time nursing her knees before the fire and then she burst out with: “I’m thinking, Nancy, that it ’ud be no so bad a thing to keep that young man with us when he gets well, and bechune us we may be able to trick that Muirhead yet.”
“But, Polly, we don’t know anything about him, and how can we tell that he is a good man, or that we’d like to have a perfect stranger to come right into the family?”
“Now isn’t that like a cautious Scot?” said Polly. “I suppose ye’d be wantin’ his character from his meenister, and another from his townfolks before ye’d give him the hand o’ friendship. He’s from Virginny, I kin tell by his trick of speakin’, and he’s a gentleman.”
“I think he is a gentleman,” said Agnes, thoughtfully, “for he is much more polite than the lads about here.”
“He’s new to the place; he’ll forgit it, give him time,” said Polly, complacently. “I’ll not be long in findin’ out whether he’s worth the keepin’ or no.” And in truth she laid her plans so well that by the time the winter was over, Parker Willett had become a member of the household. All his chivalric spirit was roused for the brave Polly, though she had been the cause of his long weeks of pain and weakness, and at first he felt inclined to resent any advances on Polly’s part. But her unfailing good humor and kindliness, and the hopeful spirit which bade her never give up looking for her missing husband, won his heart. Then, too, he felt a strange pity for Agnes, the young and helpless girl, so tender and devoted to her gentle father. Wild as a hawk was Agnes growing under Polly’s independent example, yet she was always womanly, sweet, and tender where her father was concerned. She might ride bareback on a wild young colt; she might go forth like a young Amazon, pistol in belt and knife in hand, but she would come back, fling herself from her horse, and sit down by her father gentle as a little child, trying to entertain him by talking of the dear old times.
“Agnes is a good little girl,” Mr. Kennedy would say. And Parker, who an hour before had seen this same Agnes stamping her foot at Polly, and in a rage at Jerry Hunter because he failed to do something she had requested, would smile to himself. “Poor little lass, she needs her mother,” was what Fergus Kennedy would say if Agnes were caught in one of her rages. “Where is your mother?” he would ask her wistfully.
Then would Agnes fly to him all gentleness, the fire dying out of her eyes, and her voice as soft as a dove’s. “She’s comin’ father, dear,” she would tell him. “You know we have sent for her, and she will come very, very soon. And Sandy and Margret and Jock and Jessie,—you remember, father,—they’ll all be coming along before long.” Then she would look at Parker, as if to say, “Don’t you dare to contradict.” And the young man would not for the world have borne her a moment’s ill-will, though he might have been thinking her a little hypocrite and a lawless young creature who should be well lectured. As time went on they had many tiffs, for Parker loved to tease, and Agnes would brook no contradictions from any one but her father. Indeed, Jeanie M’Clean said she was no more like the lass she used to be back there at home, so gentle, so well behaved, and she did not see what had come over her.
“It’s all Polly O’Neill’s doings,” she declared to Archie, but Archie frowned and said Agnes was well enough, and that she had a right to say what she liked.