“And let her father coax her out of it, and do another world of mischief with it!” she rejoined.
Gibbie was silent. Mrs. Sclater was right! To give is not always to bless. He must think of some way. With plenty to occupy his powers of devising, he set out.
He would gladly have seen Ginevra before he left, but had no chance. He had gone to the North church every Sunday for a long time now, neither for love of Fergus, nor dislike to Mr. Sclater, but for the sake of seeing his lost friend: had he not lost her when she turned from Donal to Fergus? Did she not forsake him too when she forsook his Donal? His heart would rise into his throat at the thought, but only for a moment: he never pitied himself. Now and then he had from her a sweet sad smile, but no sign that he might go and see her. Whether he was to see Donal when he reached Daurside, he could not tell; he had heard nothing of him since he went; his mother never wrote letters.
“Na, na; I canna,” she would say. “It wad tak a’ the pith oot o’ me to vreet letters. A’ ’at I hae to say I sen’ the up-road; it’s sure to win hame ear’ or late.”
Notwithstanding his new power, it was hardly, therefore, with his usual elation, that he took his seat on the coach. But his reception was the same as ever. At his mother’s persuasion, Donal, he found, instead of betaking himself again to bodily labours as he had purposed, had accepted a situation as tutor offered him by one of the professors. He had told his mother all his trouble.
“He’ll be a’ the better for ’t i’ the en’,” she said, with a smile of the deepest sympathy, “though, bein’ my ain, I canna help bein’ wae for ’im. But the Lord was i’ the airthquak, an’ the fire, an’ the win’ that rave the rocks, though the prophet couldna see ’im. Donal ’ill come oot o’ this wi’ mair room in ’s hert an’ mair licht in ’s speerit.”
Gibbie took his slate from the crap o’ the wa’ and wrote. “If money could do anything for him, I have plenty now.”
“I ken yer hert, my bairn,” replied Janet; “but na; siller’s but a deid horse for onything ’at smacks o’ salvation. Na; the puir fallow maun warstle oot o’ the thicket o’ deid roses as best he can—sair scrattit, nae doobt. Eh! it’s a fearfu’ an’ won’erfu’ thing that drawin’ o’ hert to hert, an’ syne a great snap, an’ a stert back, an’ there’s miles atween them! The Lord alane kens the boddom o’ ’t; but I’m thinkin’ there’s mair intil ’t, an’ a heap mair to come oot o’ ’t ere a’ be dune, than we hae ony guiss at.”
Gibbie told her that Glashruach was his. Then first the extent of his wealth seemed to strike his old mother.
“Eh! ye’ll be the laird, wull ye, than? Eh, sirs! To think o’ this hoose an’ a’ bein’ wee Gibbie’s! Weel, it dings a’. The w’ys o’ the Lord are to be thoucht upon! He made Dawvid a king, an’ Gibbie he’s made the laird! Blest be his name.”