“A droll fellow that of the Paymaster’s,” they said of him in the town. For as he aged his shyness grew upon him, and he went about the community at ease with himself only when his mind was elsewhere.
“A remarkable young gentleman,” said Mr. Spencer one day to the Paymaster. “I am struck by him, sir, I am struck. He has an air of cleverness, and yet they tell me he is—”
“He is what?” asked the Paymaster, lowering his brows suspicious on the innkeeper’s hesitation.
“They tell me he is not so great a credit to old Brooks as he might expect,” said the innkeeper, who was not lacking in boldness or plain speaking if pushed to it.
“Ay, they say that?” repeated the Paymaster, pinching his snuff vigorously. “Maybe they’re right too. I’ll tell you what. The lad’s head is stuffed with wind. He goes about with notions swishing round inside that head of his, as much the plaything of nature as the reed that whistles in the wind at the riverside and fancies itself a songster.”
Mr. Spencer tilted his London hat down upon his brow, fumbled with his fob-chain, and would have liked to ask the Paymaster if his well-known intention to send Gilian on the same career he and his brothers had followed was to be carried into effect But he felt instinctively that this was a delicate question. He let it pass unput.
Bob MacGibbon had no such delicacy. The same day at their meridian in the “Abercrombie” he broached the topic.
“I’ll tell you what it is, Captain: if that young fellow of yours is ever to earn salt for his kail, it is time he was taking a crook in his hand.”
“A crook in his hand?” said the Paymaster. “Would you have nothing else for him but a crook?”
“Well,” said MacGibbon, “I supposed you would be for putting him into Ladyfield. If that is not your notion, I wonder why you keep it on for.”