Gilian looked and saw Young Islay, a smart ensign home on leave from the county corps that even yet was taking so many fine young fellows from that community.
“There’s a lad who’s a credit to all about him, and he had not half your chances; do you know that?”
“He seems to have the knack of turning up for my poor comparison ever since I can mind,” said Gilian, good-humouredly. “And somehow,” he added, “I have a notion that he has but half my brains as well as half my chances.” He looked up to see Turner still at the inn door. “General Turner,” he cried, his face reddening and his heart stormy, “I hear that in your frank estimate I’m the Paymaster’s failure; is it so bad as that? It seems, if I may say it, scarcely fair from one of your years to one of mine.”
“Shut your mouth!” said the Paymaster coarsely, as Turner came forward. “You have no right to repeat what I said and show the man I took his insolence to heart.”
“I said it; I don’t deny,” answered the General, coming forward from the group at the door and putting his hand in a friendly freedom on the horse’s neck and looking up with some regret in Gilian’s face. “One says many things in an impetus. Excuse a soldier’s extravagance. I never meant it either for your ear or for unkindness. And you talk of ages: surely a man so much your senior has a little privilege?”
“Not to judge youth, sir, which he may have forgotten to understand,” said Gilian, yet very red and uneasy, but with a wistful countenance. “If you’ll think of it I’m just at the beginning of life, a little more shy of making the plunge perhaps than Young Islay there might be, or your own son Sandy, who’s a credit to his corps, they say.”
“Quite right, Gilian, and I ask your pardon,” said the General, putting out his hand. “God knows who the failures of this life are; some of them go about very flashy semblances of success. In these parts we judge by the external signs, that are not always safest; for my son Sandy, who looks so thriving and so douce when he comes home, is after all a scamp whose hands are ever in his simple daddy’s pockets.” But this he said laughing, with a father’s reservation.
The Paymaster stared at this encounter, in some ways so much beyond his comprehension. “Humph!” he ejaculated; and Gilian rode on, leaving in the group behind him an uncomfortable feeling that somehow, somewhere, an injustice had been done.
Miss Mary’s face was at the window whenever his horse’s hooves came clattering on the causeway—she knew the very clink of the shoes. “There’s something wrong with the laddie to-day,” she cried to Peggy; “he looks unco dejected;” and her own countenance fell in sympathy with her darling’s mood.
She met him on the stair as if by accident, pretending to be going down to her cellar in the pend. They did not even shake hands; it is a formality neglected in these parts except for long farewells or unexpected meetings. Only she must take his bonnet and cane from him and in each hand take them upstairs as if she were leading thus two little children, her gaze fond upon the back of him.