“You will soon get accustomed to our town ways, Mr. Grant. But many of the things we gather about us are far more trouble than use,” she replied, in her sweetest tones, and with a gentle pressure of the hand, which went a long way to set him at his ease. “I am glad to see you have friends here,” she added.
“Only ane, mem. Gibbie an’ me—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Grant, but would you oblige me—of course with me it is of no consequence, but just for habit’s sake, would you oblige me by calling Gilbert by his own name—Sir Gilbert, please. I wish him to get used to it.”
“Yer wull be ’t, mem.—Weel, as I was sayin’, Sir Gibbie—Sir Gilbert, that is, mem—an mysel’, we hae kenned Miss Galbraith this lang time, bein’ o’ the laird’s ain fowk, as I may say.”
“Will you take a seat beside her, then,” said Mrs. Sclater, and rising, herself placed a chair for him near Ginevra, wondering how any Scotch laird, the father of such a little lady as she, could have allowed her such an acquaintance.
To most of the company he must have looked very queer. Gibbie, indeed, was the only one who saw the real Donal. Miss Kimble and her pupils stared at the distorted reflexion of him in the spoon-bowl of their own elongated narrowness; Mrs. Sclater saw the possible gentleman through the loop-hole of a compliment he had paid her; and Mr. Sclater beheld only the minimum which the reversed telescope of his own enlarged importance, he having himself come of sufficiently humble origin, made of him; while Ginevra looked up to him more as one who marvelled at the grandly unintelligible, than one who understood the relations and proportions of what she beheld. Nor was it possible she could help feeling that he was a more harmonious object to the eye both of body and mind when dressed in his corduroys and blue bonnet, walking the green fields, with cattle about him, his club under his arm, and a book in his hand. So seen, his natural dignity was evident; now he looked undeniably odd. A poet needs a fine house rather than a fine dress to set him off, and Mrs. Sclater’s drawing-room was neither large nor beautiful enough to frame this one, especially with his Sunday clothes to get the better of. To the school ladies, mistress and pupils, he was simply a clodhopper, and from their report became a treasure of poverty-stricken amusement to the school. Often did Ginevra’s cheek burn with indignation at the small insolences of her fellow-pupils. At first she attempted to make them understand something of what Donal really was, but finding them unworthy of the confidence, was driven to betake herself to such a silence as put a stop to their offensive remarks in her presence.
“I thank ye, mem,” said Donal, as he took the chair; “ye’re verra condescendin’.” Then turning to Ginevra, and trying to cross one knee over the other, but failing from the tightness of certain garments, which, like David with Saul’s not similarly faulty armour, he had not hitherto proved, “Weel, mem,” he said, “ye haena forgotten Hornie, I houp.”
The other girls must be pardoned for tittering, offensive as is the habit so common to their class, for the only being they knew by that name was one to whom the merest reference sets pit and gallery in a roar. Miss Kimble was shocked—disgusssted, she said afterwards; and until she learned that the clown was there uninvited, cherished a grudge against Mrs. Sclater.
Ginevra smiled him a satisfactory negative.
“I never read the ballant aboot the worm lingelt roon’ the tree,” said Donal, making rather a long link in the chain of association, “ohn thoucht upo’ that day, mem, whan first ye cam doon the brae wi’ my sister Nicie, an’ I cam ower the burn till ye, an’ ye garred me lauch aboot weetin’ o’ my feet! Eh, mem! wi’ you afore me there, I see the blew lift again, an’ the gerse jist lowin’ (flaming) green, an’ the nowt at their busiest, the win’ asleep, an’ the burn sayin’, ‘Ye need nane o’ ye speyk: I’m here, an’ it’s my business.’ Eh, mem! whan I think upo’ ’t a’, it seems to me ’at the human hert closed i’ the mids o’ sic a coffer o’ cunnin’ workmanship, maun be a terrible precious-like thing.”