“No, for your sake, my dear, I will not greet; therefore cheer up thy little kind heart, for there is One who will provide for us still, and will not suffer two helpless inexperienced beings like you and I to perish.”
“Geoge like ’at man.”
“It is no man that we must now depend on, my dear; we must depend on God, who will never forsake us.”
“Geoge like God.”
Here she kissed him and wept anew, yet was all the while trying to console him. “Let us be of good cheer, George; while I have health I will work for you, for you have no one else on earth that cares for you.”
“But no geet, mamma, I tell you; Geoge wulk too. When Geoge tuln geat big man, Geoge wulk mole ’an two mans.”
Here their tender prattle was interrupted by a youth named Barnaby, who was close at their side before they observed him. He was one of Robin’s servants, who herded a few young sheep at the back of the hill where Jane was sitting. He was fifteen years of age, tall and thin, but had fine features, somewhat pitted with the small-pox. He had an inexhaustible fund of good-humour and drollery, and playing the fool among the rest of the servants to keep them laughing was his chiefest delight; but his folly was all affected, and the better part of his character lay concealed behind the screen of a fantastic exterior. He never mended his clothes like the rest of the servant lads, but suffered them to fall into as many holes as they inclined; when any expostulated with him on the subject, he said, “he likit them nae the waur o’ twa or three holes to let in the air;” and, in truth, he was as ragged a youth as one would see in a summer day. His hat was remarkably broad-brimmed and supple, and hung so far over his eyes, that, when he looked any person in the face, he had to take the same position as if looking at a vertical star. This induced him often, when he wanted to see fairly about him, to fold in the fore part of the brim within the crown, which gave it the appearance of half a hat, and in this way was he equipped when he joined Jane and little George. They had been intimately acquainted from the first; he had done many little kind offices for her, and had the sagacity to discover that there was something about her greatly superior to the other girls about the hamlet; and he had never used the same freedom with her in his frolics that he was wont to do with them.
“What ails you, Jeany?” said he; “I thought I heard you greeting.”
“No, no, Barnaby; I do not ail any thing; I was not crying.”