“I saw her laying the corner of the table,” said the Paymaster, “and I’ll warrant it was not to feed herself at this time of day.”
The Cornal looked again at the verses, clearing his eyes with his hand, as if he might happily be mistaken. But no, there were the foolish lines, and some sentiments most unmanly frank of love and idleness among the moor and heather. He growled; he frowned below his shaggy brows: “Come down this instant and put an end to it,” said he.
“He’s with Mary,” his brother reminded him, hesitating.
“I don’t care a curse if he was with the Duke,” said the Cornal. “I’ll end this carry-on in an honest and industrious family.”
He led the way downstairs, the Paymaster following softly, both in their slippers. Noiselessly they pushed open the door of Miss Mary’s room and gazed within. She and her darling were looking over the window at the tumultuous crowd of children scrambling for Young Islay’s bowl-money scattered by Black Duncan in the golden syver sand. Miss Mary in that position could not but have her arm about his waist, and her hand unconsciously caressed the rough home-spun of his jacket. The brothers, unobserved, stood silent in the doorway.
“That’s the end of it!” said Gilian bitterly, as he came wholly into the room. His face, shone on by the sun that struck above the tall lands opposite from fiery clouds, was white to the lips. Miss Mary looked up into his eyes, mourning in her very inmost for his torture.
“I would say ‘fair wind to her,’ my dear, and a good riddance,” said she, and yet without conviction in her tone.
“I will say ‘fair wind’ readily,” he answered, “but I cannot be forgetting. I know she likes—she loves me still.”
Miss Mary showed her pity in her face, but nothing at all had she to say.
“You are not doubting it, are you?” he cried eagerly; and, still unnoticed in the doorway, the Paymaster grimaced his contempt, but his brother, touched by some influence inexplicable, put the poem in his pocket and delayed the entry.