"Ye'll min'," he added, as she was leaving the shop, "that I hae to pay ye no interest noo excep' upo' fifty poun'?"
He had paid her nothing for the last half year at least.
He would not have dared to fleece the girl thus, had she had any legally constituted guardians; or had those who would gladly have interfered, had power to protect her. But he took care so to word the quittance, that in the event of any thing going wrong, he might yet claim his hundred pounds from Mrs Forbes.
Annie read over the receipt, and saw that she had involved herself in a difficulty. How would Mrs Forbes take it? She begged Bruce not to tell her, and he was ready enough to consent. He did more. He wrote to Mrs Forbes to the effect that, upon reflection, he had resolved to drop further proceedings for the present; and when she carried him a half-year's interest, he took it in silence, justifying himself on the ground that the whole transaction was of doubtful success, and he must therefore secure what he could secure.
As may well be supposed, Annie had very little money to give away now; and this subjected her to a quite new sense of suffering.
CHAPTER XC.
It was a dreary wintry summer to all at Howglen. Why should the ripe corn wave deep-dyed in the gold of the sunbeams, when Alec lay frozen in the fields of ice, or sweeping about under them like a broken sea-weed in the waters so cold, so mournful? Yet the work of the world must go on. The corn must be reaped. Things must be bought and sold. Even the mourners must eat and drink. The stains which the day had gathered must be washed from the brow of the morning; and the dust to which Alec had gone down must be swept from the chair in which he had been wont to sit. So things did go on�-of themselves as it were, for no one cared much about them, although it was the finest harvest that year that Howglen had ever borne. It had begun at length to appear that the old labour had not been cast into a dead grave, but into a living soil, like that of which Sir Philip Sidney says in his sixty-fifth psalm:
"Each clodd relenteth at thy dressing,"
as if it were a human soul that had bethought itself and began to bring forth fruit.�-This might be the beginning of good things. But what did it matter?
Annie grew paler, but relaxed not a single effort to fill her place. She told her poor friends that she had no money now, and could not help them; but most were nearly as glad to see her as before; while one of them who had never liked receiving alms from a girl in such a lowly position, as well as some who had always taken them thankfully, loved her better when she had nothing to give.