Greta was perverse to-night. Instinctively she fell to comparing the little points of manner, dress, speech, in which the two men differed. She grew angry with the preacher for compelling such comparison; now and then she blushed for Gabriel Hirst, as she had not blushed when he came upon her with her little bare feet paddling in the water. She had taken the only vacant chair, which chanced to be close to Griff's: Hirst sat by the miller at the other side of the room, and tried to talk, listening eagerly the while for scraps of the conversation that was passing between the other two.
"And how do you like our wild country?" asked Griff, by way of making idle chit-chat.
Gabriel was in the middle of a polemical discussion with old Rotherson, but he paused for Greta's answer. She glanced across at the preacher and saw that he was listening.
"Well enough," she said, with a toss of the head. "But the people are like the country—rather too wild, don't you think?"
The preacher writhed in his chair; it was a girl's unbalanced coquetry, yet it cut straight to his simple heart. And the two on the other side of the fireplace went on with their light talk, and Greta let no chance of a stab go by, knowing well that the man who presumed to care for her would hear her every word. Lomax, seeing by the man's face how things were going, strove to lead his companion into quieter channels; but her wit was nimble, and, no matter what the topic might be, she made it good for a covert gibe at Gabriel.
"Greta, lass, it's about time we had some glasses in," said the miller at length. "Smoking's dry work without a drop of whisky to help it down. You take a dram now and then, Mr. Lomax?"
"That I do."
"I thought you looked that sort, somehow," said the miller, with an involuntary glance at Gabriel.
When the whisky had been brought in, with icy, beaded water from the well-spring just without the house door; when old Rotherson had allowed his guest to mix him a glass, and had entreated him, with a jovial twinkle, "not to drown the miller;" when Griff had helped himself to a liberal half-and-half, which the strength of his head warranted—it occurred to Lomax to effect a redistribution of seats. Gabriel, seeing him hovering vaguely on the outskirts of the hearthrug, at length divined that he had an opportunity of sitting beside the girl; he moved clumsily across the floor, and Greta frowned as she watched him.
"I was at chapel on Sunday night," she observed.