‘Cold? and nothing more?’ asked the young man.
‘Ane can never tell—it might turn into an influenza,’ said Jenny; ‘but that’s a’ the noo, for a’ that I can see.’
And then she closed the door upon him, with a certain malicious satisfaction. Stapylton was no favourite in the parish; perhaps because of a sneer which was always lurking behind the few civilities which he had ever been known to offer. Jenny had no confidence either in his friendship or his love.
‘Yon’s the lad that would beguile a young lass, but be dour as iron and steel to his wife as soon as she had married him. I hope there’s naething amiss between him and Isabel,’ she said to Jean, when she described this visit; and Jean felt a little thrill go through her, as if this new event threw light on something, though she could scarcely tell what.
‘Do you think our Isabel would be thinking of any such nonsense at such a time!’ she said, indignantly. But still a sensation as of some discovery darted through her own heart.
Stapylton, however, shut out as he thus was from all approach to Isabel, was not to be so easily put off. He hastened down the road at his quickest pace, determined to find out, at least, from the minister what had happened. Mr. Lothian was standing at the door of the doctor’s house when the young man made up to him.
‘Is it you, Stapylton?’ he said, with an evident struggle to be friendly. ‘It has been a dreadful day.’
‘Not cheerful,’ said the young man; ‘but only, after all, “a wee saft,” as you say in these parts. You have not been consulting the doctor, I hope, for yourself?’
‘No,’ said Mr. Lothian, fixing his eyes upon his interrogator, and adding nothing to the syllable. Stapylton’s spirit of natural rivalry woke up at once.
‘I saw a messenger for the doctor coming from the Glebe,’ he said. ‘I hope I might be mistaken—or if there is anyone ill there, that it is only one of the children. Children are always ill.’