This rebuke, drawn from the endless thesaurus of “The Universal Spelling-Book,” and not original even in spelling, Will believed to be Jinny’s own composition, and as inspired as it was, alas! deserved. Wonderful that Jinny could sit down in all that turmoil, in that smoky, gin-laden atmosphere, and pour out these pure bursts of song. Surely Martin Tupper, the mighty bard of the day, whose renown had reached even Will’s illiterate ears, could not better them. And what was he, Will, beside her, he whose own claim to literature rested upon an imaginary exposition of Daniel! Smarting with self-reproach, he deposited the note where once her glove had rested—it should be a text of warning henceforward.
But if she was thus marvellous, still more necessary was it to withdraw her from these unfitting atmospheres, and he returned more tenaciously than ever to his equine watch, like a picket in a camp.
V
Meanwhile Jinny had blotted herself out in the crowd around the sheep-auctioneer, who towered in the midst of his dirty-white sea, yelling “All going at thirty-five shillings apiece!” or striding from pen to pen across the bars, while the buyers ruddled their lots with their mark, and the drovers cleared for him ever fresh passages among the swirling sheep, and acolytes kept parallel to him outside the fold with their ink-horns and notebooks.
But she had only fallen from the frying-pan into the oven, for suddenly she became conscious that Farmer Gale was again at her side.
“Got your horse yet?” he inquired, with his breeziest British smile.
“Sale not on yet,” she answered coldly.
“Then come and see the bullocks sell.”
Jinny, pleading she must go to the horse sale-room, moved away towards the congested chamber. He followed, smiling.
“Why, that is where they’re selling the bullocks now,” he said.