“Well,” she repeated sharply, for he had not answered.
He looked up with a start. “Are you not coming?” he said, with a tone to suggest that he was waiting impatiently.
She had the window wide open now; she leaned out on her arms ready to descend; the last rung of the ladder was a foot lower than the sill of the window; she looked in perplexity at her cavalier, for it was impossible to put much of grace into an emergence and a descent like this.
“I am just coming,” she said, but still she made no other move, and he held up the lantern for her to sec the better.
“Well, be careful!” he advised, and he thought how delightful it was to have the right to say so much.
“O Gilian!” she said helplessly, “you are far from gleg.”
He gazed ludicrously uncomprehending at her, and in his sense of almost conjugal right to the girl failed to realise her delicacy.
“Go round to the barn and make sure that Duncan is not moving; he’s the only one I fear,” she said. “Leave the lantern.”
He did as he was told; he put the lantern on the ground; he went round again to the barn, put his head in, and satisfied himself that his seaman was still musical aloft. Then he hurried back. He found the lantern swinging on Nan’s finger, and her composed upon the ground, to which she had made a speedy descent whenever he had disappeared.
“Oh! I wanted to help you,” said he.