Jean said nothing; she embraced her; and made them flow faster.
But, when they came alongside the pier, Jean, who was the first to get her head from under the sail, whipped it back again and said to Christie:
“Here he is, Christie; dinna speak till him.”
And sure enough there was, in the twilight, with a pale face and an uneasy look—Mr. Charles Gatty!
He peered timidly into the boat, and, when he saw Christie, an “Ah!” that seemed to mean twenty different things at once, burst from his bosom. He held out his arm to assist her.
She cast on him one glance of mute reproach, and, placing her foot on the boat's gunwale, sprang like an antelope upon the pier, without accepting his assistance.
Before going further, we must go back for this boy, and conduct him from where we left him up to the present point.
The moment he found himself alone with Jean Carnie, in his own house, he began to tell her what trouble he was in; how his mother had convinced him of his imprudence in falling in love with Christie Johnstone; and how she insisted on a connection being broken off which had given him his first glimpse of heaven upon earth, and was contrary to common sense.
Jean heard him out, and then, with the air of a lunatic-asylum keeper to a rhodomontading patient, told him “he was one fool, and his mother was another.” First she took him up on the score of prudence.
“You,” said she, “are a beggarly painter, without a rap; Christie has houses, boats, nets, and money; you are in debt; she lays by money every week. It is not prudent on her part to take up with you—the better your bargain, my lad.”