“Nae word of them, nae word of them,” answered the Dragon. “They’re in at Stirling doing their ain pleasure, ye may tak my word for that. See, bairns, yonder’s Geordie Paxton, my sister’s son, coming in frae the field. He’s very sune dune the nicht. Just you look at him as he gangs by, and see what an auld failed man he is, aulder like than me.”
Geordie, laden with his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, was returning home with those heavy, lengthened, slow strides which almost persuade you that some great clod drags back the heavy-weighted footstep of the rustic labourer. He was a man of fifty, with bent shoulders and a furrowed face; but though their old attendant advanced to him at a pace which Geordie’s slow step could ill have emulated, the children, glancing up at the hale, brown, careworn face of the family father, and contrasting with it their poor old Dragon’s ashy cheeks and wandering eyes, were by no means inclined to pronounce Geordie as old as his uncle.
“How’s a’ wi’ ye the day, auld man?” said the slow-spoken labourer. “Aye daundering about in the auld way, I see. And how are ye liking the new family, uncle?”
“No that ill,” answered the old man. “I’ve kent waur, to be such young craturs; and to tell you the truth, Geordie, I feel just that I might be their faither, and that I’m appointed to take care o’ the puir things. Thae’s twa o’ the bairns, and our Mr. Hairy’s wean is weer than them still.”
“He has a muckle family on his hands, puir lad,” said Geordie. “He’ll hae mair o’ his ain siller than the Allenders lands, it’s like, or he ne’er would live in such grandeur. Your auld man never tried the like of yon, uncle.”
“Ay, but Mr. Hairy has a grand spirit,” said the Dragon; “and what for should he no have a’ thing fine about him, sic a fine young lad as he is? See yonder, he’s coming this very minute along the road.”
The boys were still grouped in a ring round Maidlin Cross; and as Dragon spoke a shrill cheer hailed the advent of Harry’s carriage as it dashed along in a cloud of dust towards Allenders. Harry himself was driving, his face covered with smiles, but his hands holding tight by the reins, and himself in a state of not very comfortable excitement, at the unusual pace of the respectable horse, which he had chafed into excitement too. In the carriage was Charteris, looking grave and anxious, Gilbert Allenders, and another; but Harry could only nod, and Cuthbert bend over the side, to bow and wave his hand to little Violet as they flew past. There was not really any danger, for Harry’s horse understood its business much better than its driver did; but Harry himself was considerably alarmed, though his pride would not permit him to deliver up the reins into the hands of John, who sat on the box by his side.
Violet did not think of danger; but, without saying a word to any one, and indeed with a perfect inability to give a reason, she sat down upon the roadside grass, and cried. Dragon, who had added a feeble hurra to the cheer of the boys, bent down his white head anxiously, and Katie sat by her side and whispered, “Dinna greet!” and Geordie looked on in hard, observant silence. But when Lettie rose at last, and dried her eyes, and went on, neither her young companion nor her old one could glean from her what ailed her. “Nothing—she did not know.” Poor little Lettie! she did not know indeed.
CHAPTER XIII.
Oh, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem