“Oh, I could have guessed as much as that, Isobel,” said I, wondering who in all the world the fellow was. Her sun-bonnet had fallen from her head in her running, and hung at her back on its pink ribbons, and a curl or two of her hair played truant upon her cheek and temple. It seemed to me the young gentleman she was willing to let a book drop for as a signal of her whereabouts was lucky enough.
“Oh! you could have guessed!” she repeated, with a tone in which were dumbfounderment and annoyance; “then I might have saved myself the trouble.” And off she went again, leaving me more the stirk than ever and greatly struck at her remorse of conscience over a little sophistry very pardonable in a lass caught gallivanting. When she was gone and her frock was fluttering pink at the turn of the road, I was seized for the first time with a notion that a girl like that some way set off, as we say, or suited with, a fine landscape.
Not five minutes later I met young David Borland of the Driepps, and there—I told myself—the lover was revealed! He let on he was taking a short cut for Polnoon, so I said neither buff nor sty as to Mistress Isobel.
The cool superiority of the gentleman, who had, to tell the truth, as little in his head as I had in the heel of my shoe, somewhat galled me, for it cried “Spoiled Horn!” as loud as if the taunt were bawled, so my talk with him was short. There was but one topic in it to interest me.
“Has the man with the scarred brow come yet?” he asked curiously.
I did not understand.
“Then he's not your length yet,” said he, with the manifest gratification of one who has the hanselling of great news. “Oh! I came on him this morning outside a tavern in the Gorbals, bargaining loudly about a saddle horse for Hazel Den. I'll warrant Hazel Den will get a start when it sees him.”
I did not care to show young Borland much curiosity in his story, and so it was just in the few words he gave it to me that I brought it home to our supper-table.
My father and mother looked at each other as if I had told them a tragedy. The supper ended abruptly. The evening worship passed unusually fast, my father reading the Book as one in a dream, and we went to our beds nigh an hour before the customary time.