"I'm going to bed now," said she. "I've sat here talking too long. You ought to be asleep, and so ought I."
"Perhaps! Perhaps!" the old man said. "I don't feel sleepy, though. I dare say I shall read a little." He held her hand in his and looked up at her.
"I've been talking a great deal of nonsense about marriage," said he. "Put it out of your head! It's all nonsense. I don't want you to marry for a long time. I don't want to lose you." His face twisted a little, quite suddenly. "You're precious near all I have left, now," he said.
The girl did not answer at once, for it seemed to her that there was nothing to say. She knew that her grandfather was thinking of the lost boy, and she knew what a bitter blow the thing had been to him. She often thought that it would kill him before his old malady could run its course.
But after a moment she said, very gently: "We won't give up hope. We'll never give up hope. Think! he might come home to-morrow! Who knows?"
"If he has stayed away of his own accord," cried out old David Stewart, in a loud voice, "I'll never forgive him--not if he comes to me to-morrow on his knees! Not even if he comes to me on his knees!"
The girl bent over her grandfather, saying: "Hush! hush! You mustn't excite yourself." But old David's gray face was working, and his eyes gleamed from their cavernous shadows with a savage fire.
"If the boy is staying away out of spite," he repeated, "he need never come back to me. I won't forgive him." He beat his unemployed hand upon the table before him, and the things which lay there jumped and danced. "And if he waits until I'm dead and then comes back," said he, "he'll find he has made a mistake--a great mistake. He'll find a surprise in store for him, I can tell you that. I won't tell you what I have done, but it will be a disagreeable surprise for Master Arthur, you may be sure."
The old gentleman fell to frowning and muttering in his choleric fashion, but the fierce glitter began to go out of his eyes and his hands ceased to tremble and clutch at the things before him. The girl was silent, because again there seemed to her to be nothing that she could say. She longed very much to plead her brother's cause, but she was sure that would only excite her grandfather, and he was growing quieter after his burst of anger. She bent down over him and kissed his cheek.
"Try to go to sleep," she said. "And don't torture yourself with thinking about all this. I'm as sure that poor Arthur is not staying away out of spite as if he were myself. He's foolish and headstrong, but he's not spiteful, dear. Try to believe that. And now I'm really going. Good-night." She kissed him again and slipped out of the room. And as she closed the door she heard her grandfather pull the bell-cord which hung beside him and summoned the excellent Peters from the room beyond.