“As a general thing, girls are quick enough to find out when a man cares for them, and he showed it plainly to me. I guess she mistrusts.”
“No, a woman kens when a man his lost his heart to her. He lets her see it in many ways, when he has no thought of doing so. But a woman is not likely to know it, when a man without love wishes to marry her, till he tells her in words. And what heart has twenty years cheat’ry of his fellow men left to yon man, that my bairn should waste a thought on a worldling like him?”
Mr Snow was silent. His wife’s tone betrayed to him that something was troubling her, or he would have ventured a word in his new friend’s defence. Not that he was inclined to plead Mr Green’s cause with Graeme, but he could not help feeling a little compassion for him, and he said:
“Well, I suppose I feel inclined to take his part, because he makes me think of what I was myself once, and that not so long ago.”
The look that Mrs Snow turned upon her husband was one of indignant astonishment.
“Like you! You dry stick!”
“Well, ain’t he? You used to think me a pretty hard case. Now, didn’t you?”
“I’m no’ going to tell you to-night what I used to think of you,” said his wife, more mildly. “I never saw you on the day when you didna think more of other folks’ comfort than you thought of your own, and that couldna be said of him, this many a year and day. He is not a fit mate for my bairn.”
“Well—no, he ain’t. He ain’t a Christian, and that is the first thing she would consider. But he ain’t satisfied with himself, and if anybody in the world could bring him to be what he ought to be, she is the one.” And he repeated the conversation that had taken place when they were left alone in the summer-house.
“But being dissatisfied with himself, is very far from being a changed man, and that work must be done by a greater than Graeme. And besides, if he were a changed man to-night, he is no’ the man to win Miss Graeme’s heart, and he’ll no ask her. He is far more like to ask Rosie; for I doubt she is not beyond leading him on for her own amusement.”