'It's very nice up here, isn't it, Mr. Maude?' Babiole said, after a few seconds' search for an opening remark.
'But it's much too late for you to be out here by yourself.'
'Yes. I had forgotten it was so late,' she said humbly, with a sensitive blush at my mild reproof. 'Poor mamma wanted to be quiet, and told me to go out; so I came here.'
She was winding about her the thick plaid she always carried when the weather was cold; and this, when adjusted Highland fashion across the shoulder, made her, in conjunction with the knitted Tam-o'-Shanter cap she wore, a most picturesque and appropriate figure among the dead heather and the fir-trees.
'You look like Helen M'Gregor,' said I, smiling.
She smiled back brightly, but shook her head.
'I haven't courage enough for myself, much less enough to inspire anybody else with,' she said rather sadly.
'Courage is a thing you can't measure until you have to use it. What makes you think you have none, Babiole? I feel sure you have a great deal.'
She began to laugh, in the shyest, sweetest, prettiest way; and, putting her hand on the stout stick I carried, she twisted it round and round in the earth, and looked up in my face affectionately.
'Yes, yes, I know. That is the way you always teach me. You told me I was intelligent and industrious, until I began to be both; and I daresay, if you were to tell me long enough,—in your own kind way, helping me on by your own strong wish,—that I was brave, why I should become so. But I'm not now.'