"Ou, then," he went on, with the same provoking coolness, "white paper's o' geyan use, in various operations o' the domestic economy. Sae I just tare it up—aiblins for pipe-lights—I canna mind at this time."
"And why," asked I, more vexed and disappointed than I liked to confess—"why did you not tell me before?"
"How wad I ken that you had need o't? An' verily, I thocht it no that bad a lesson for ye, to let ye experiment a towmond mair on the precious balms that break the head—whereby I opine the Psalmist was minded to denote the delights o' spending borrowed siller."
There was nothing more to be extracted from him; so I was fain to set to work again (a pleasant compulsion truly) with a free heart, eight pounds in my pocket, and a brainful of conjectures. Was it the dean? Lord Lynedale? or was it—could it be—Lillian herself? That thought was so delicious that I made up my mind, as I had free choice among half a dozen equally improbable fancies, to determine that the most pleasant should be the true one; and hoarded the money, which I shrunk from spending as much as I should from selling her miniature or a lock of her beloved golden hair. They were a gift from her—a pledge—the first fruits of—I dare not confess to myself what.
Whereat the reader will smile, and say, not without reason, that I was fast fitting myself for Bedlam; if, indeed, I had not proved my fitness for it already, by paying the tailors' debts, instead of my own, with the ten pounds which Farmer Porter had given me. I am not sure that he would not be correct; but so I did, and so I suffered.
CHAPTER XXV.
A TRUE NOBLEMAN.
At last my list of subscribers was completed, and my poems actually in the press. Oh! the childish joy with which I fondled my first set of proofs! And how much finer the words looked in print than they ever did in manuscript!—One took in the idea of a whole page so charmingly at a glance, instead of having to feel one's way through line after line, and sentence after sentence.—There was only one drawback to my happiness—Mackaye did not seem to sympathize with it. He had never grumbled at what I considered, and still do consider, my cardinal offence, the omission of the strong political passages; he seemed, on the contrary, in his inexplicable waywardness, to be rather pleased at it than otherwise. It was my publishing at all at which he growled.
"Ech," he said, "owre young to marry, is owre young to write; but it's the way o' these puir distractit times. Nae chick can find a grain o' corn, but oot he rins cackling wi' the shell on his head, to tell it to a' the warld, as if there was never barley grown on the face o' the earth before. I wonder whether Isaiah began to write before his beard was grown, or Dawvid either? He had mony a long year o' shepherding an' moss-trooping, an' rugging an' riving i' the wilderness, I'll warrant, afore he got thae gran' lyrics o' his oot o' him. Ye might tak example too, gin ye were minded, by Moses, the man o' God, that was joost forty years at the learning o' the Egyptians, afore he thocht gude to come forward into public life, an' then fun' to his gran' surprise, I warrant, that he'd begun forty years too sune—an' then had forty years mair, after that, o' marching an' law-giving, an' bearing the burdens o' the people, before he turned poet."
"Poet, sir! I never saw Moses in that light before."