“There are some preliminary exercises,” said Rob, “that are thought necessary; very simple—drawing straight lines, and curves, and corners. I am sure you will do them all—by instinct.”
“Oh!” said Margaret again. Her countenance fell. “But any child would draw straight lines; a straight line is nothing—it is just that,” she added, tracing a line in the soft, brown, upturned earth of the ploughed field through which the path ran. But when Margaret looked at it, she reddened and furtively attempted another. She had met Rob by the burn as before, and he was walking back with her toward home. The sky was overcast and lowering. The brief interval of lovely weather had for the moment come to an end. Clouds were gathering on all the hills, and the winds sighed about the hedges, heavy with coming rain.
“The furrow is straight,” said Rob, “straight as an arrow; that is the ploughman’s pride; but it is not so easy to draw a straight line as you think. I have known people who could never do it.”
Margaret was crimson with the failure.
“It’s me that am stupid!” she cried, in sudden rage with herself. “How do the ploughmen learn to do it? There’s nobody to show them the way.”
“It’s their pride; and it’s their trade, Miss Margaret.”
“Oh!” cried Margaret, stamping her foot, “it shall be my pride, and my trade too. I will begin to-night when I go home. I will never, never rest till I can do it.”
“But it will never be your trade—nor mine,” said Rob Glen, with a sigh. “I wish I knew what mine was. You are rich and a lady; but I am a poor man, that must work for my living, and I don’t know what I must do.”
“If I were you—” said Margaret. As she spoke she blushed, but only because she always did, not with any special signification in it. Rob, however, did not understand this. He saw the glow of color, the sudden brightness, the droop and sensitive fall of the soft eyelids: all things telling of emotion, he thought, as though the supposition, “if I were you,” had thrilled the girl’s being; and his own heart gave a leap. Did she—was it possible—feel like this for him already? “If I were you,” said Margaret, musingly, “I would be a farmer; but no, not, perhaps, if I were you. You could do other things; you could go into the world, you could do something great—”
“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I? No, there is nothing great, nothing grand about me.”