“So, Jenny!” he said, with his loose lips pulled out straight, “that is the sort of companion you choose when left to yourself!—a low, beggarly, insolent scamp!—scarcely the equal of the brutes he has the charge of!”
“They’re sheep, papa!” pleaded Ginevra, in a wail that rose almost to a scream.
“I do believe the girl is an idiot!” said her father, and turned from her contemptuously.
“I think I am, papa,” she sobbed. “Don’t mind me. Let me go away, and I will never trouble you any more.” She would go to the mountain, she thought, and be a shepherdess with Gibbie.
Her father took her roughly by the arm, pushed her into a closet, locked the door, went and had his luncheon, and in the afternoon, having borrowed Snowball, took her just as she was, drove to meet the mail coach, and in the middle of the night was set down with her at the principal hotel in the city, whence the next morning he set out early to find a school where he might leave her and his responsibility with her.
When Gibbie knew himself beyond the hearing of Ginevra, his song died away, and he went home sad. The gentle girl had stepped at once from the day into the dark, and he was troubled for her. But he remembered that she had another father besides the laird, and comforted himself.
When he reached home, he found his mother in serious talk with a stranger. The tears were in her eyes, and had been running down her cheeks, but she was calm and dignified as usual.
“Here he comes!” she said as he entered. “The will o’ the Lord be dune—noo an’ for ever-mair! I’m at his biddin’.—An’ sae’s Gibbie.”
It was Mr. Sclater. The witch had sailed her brander well.