“Did you?” said she, looking for a sign of the humorist, but he was as solemn as a sermon.
They might have been extremely sedate in Miss Simpson’s school in Edinburgh, but at that moment Miss Nan would have forgiven some apparent appreciation of her cleverness in getting him out of the way while she came feet first through a window. They stood for a moment in expectancy, as if something was going to happen, she still holding the lantern, trembling a little, as it might be with the cold, he with her bundle under his arm pressed affectionately.
“And—and—do we just go on?” she asked suggestively.
“The quicker the better,” said he, but he made no movement to depart, for his mind was in the house of Maam, and he felt the father’s sorrow and alarm at an empty bed, a daughter gone.
She put out an arm, flushing in the dark as she did so, as if to place it on his neck, but drew back and put the lantern fast behind her, lest her fervour had been noticed by the ironic and jealous night. He, she saw, could not notice; the thing was not in his mind.
“In the stories they just move off, then?” said she shyly. “There was the meeting, the meeting—no more, and they just went away?”
“And the sooner the better,” said he, again leading the way at last, after taking the lantern from her, and “John Hielan’man, John Hielan’man!” she cried vexatiously within.
She followed, pouting her lips in the darkness. “It’s quite different from what I expected,” she said, whispering as they passed the front door and down by the burn.
“And with me too,” he confessed. “I had it made up in my mind all otherwise. There should have been moonlight and a horse, and many other things.” “It seems to me you are not making so much as you might of what there is,” she suggested. “Are you sure it is not a trouble to carry the lantern and the bundle too?”
“Oh! no, no!” he cried softly, but eagerly, every chivalric sentiment roused lest she should deprive him of the pleasure of doing all he could for her. She sighed.