She was not a girl to be at every one's command, but sooner or later most women find it pleasant to be under orders, for a time, at any rate; doubtless as the result of that past slavery of which we hear so much nowadays. The feeling will be eradicated in the next generation or so, but it must be allowed for in this.
"They're sayin' Gleneira will have to sell the place, and"--she looked at the face beside her critically, as if to judge how far she might go--"they're sayin' it's a pity you were no the laird, Mr. Paul, for you love every stick and stone about, and he is never coming near it at all, at all."
The young man walked on in silence.
"Did ye know that I've never seen the laird, Mr. Paul, though me an' mither has lived at the croft since I can mind anything; but, then, she is no going down the strath, and he is no carin' for the fishin', as you are; you're knowin' every stone in the river, I'm thinkin'."
He turned to her with a quick laugh as if to dismiss the subject. "And every face beside it; for I like pretty things, and some of them are pretty. I'll tell you what it is, Jeanie, Gleneira's the most beautiful place I ever saw; and you are the most beautiful girl in it. Beggar-Maids haven't a chance, so I shall expect to be invited to your nuptials with King Cophetua; a poor laird's Jock like myself can't compete with a crowned head." The bitterness of his tone had more to do with the prospect of having to let Gleneira go, than to the manifest difficulty of appropriating Jeanie Duncan without offending his head or her heart.
"There's better worth having than crowns, maybe," said the girl, doggedly.
"Right! crowned heads may be penniless; let us say an old monarch wi' siller."
"There's better worth having than siller, maybe."
Paul looked at her curiously. Apparently it was not for nothing that he had amused his sitter by reciting the almost endless repertoire of old ballads and songs in which he had taken delight since his earliest boyhood. For it was part of his rather complex nature that he should admire the romance and sentiment in which, with the easily adopted cynicism of a clever lad, he professed to disbelieve. It suited him as a refuge from himself; and yet the fact that Jeanie Duncan had accepted this admiration as a proof of eternal truth did not displease him.
"Better worth than siller!" he echoed, wilfully provoking the answer which he knew would come. "Why! there is nothing better worth than siller--in the end."