“Would that vex you?” asked Gilian.
“It would not vex Colin; he would give his only infant, if he had one, to the army; but I was thinking of you left behind in the march about the loch-head, and lost and starving somewhere about the wood of Dunderave.”
“I would not starve in Dunderave so long as the nut and bramble were there,” said Gilian, rejoicing in her kindly perturbation. “And I could not be lost anywhere—”
“—Except in the Duke’s flower garden, wasting the time with—with—a woman’s daughter,” said the Cornal, putting his head in at the kitchen door. He frowned upon his sister for her too prompt kindness to the rover, and she hid behind her a cup of new-skimmed cream. “Come upstairs and have a talk with Dugald and me,” he went on to the boy.
“Will it not do in the morning?” asked Miss Mary, all shaking, dreading her darling’s punishment.
“No,” said the Cornal, “Now or never. Oh! you need have no fears that I would put him to the triangle.”
“Then I may go too?” said Miss Mary.
The Cornal put the boy in front of him and pushed him towards the stair-foot. “You stay where you are,” he said to his sister. “This will be a man’s sederunt.”
They went up the stair together and entered the parlour, to find the General half-sleeping in his lug-chair. He started at the apparition of the entering youth.
“You are not drowned after all,” said he, “and there’s my money gone that I spent for a gross of stenlock hooks to grapple you.”