And one small bird began to pipe in a clump of willows, that showered a dust of gold upon us when the little breeze came among the branches. I looked at all and I looked at Isobel Fortune, so trim and bonny, and it seemed there and then good to be a man and my fortunes all to try.
“Sorrow here or sorrow there, Isobel,” I said, “they are the shoes to take me away sooner or later from Hazel Den.”
She caught my meaning with astounding quickness.
“Are you in earnest?” she asked soberly, and I thought she could not have been more vexed had it been David Borland.
“Another year of this.” said I, looking at the vacant land, “would break my heart.”
“Indeed, Paul, and I thought Earn-side was never so sweet as now,” said she, vexed like, as if she was defending a companion.
“That is true, too,” said I, smiling into the very depths of her large dark eyes, where I saw a pair of Spoiled Horns as plainly as if I looked in sunny weather into Linn of Earn. “That is true, too. I have never been better pleased with it than to-day. But what in the world's to keep me? It's all bye with the college—at which I'm but middling well pleased; it's all bye with the law—for which thanks to Heaven! and, though they seem to think otherwise at Hazel Den House, I don't believe I've the cut of a man to spend his life among rowting cattle and dour clay land.”
“I daresay not; it's true,” said she stammeringly, with one fast glance that saw me from the buckles of my red shoes to the underlids of my eyes. For some reason or other she refused to look higher, and the distant landscape seemed to have charmed her after that. She drummed with a toe upon the path; she bit her nether lip; upon my word, the lass had tears at her eyes! I had, plainly, kept her long enough from her lover. “Well, it's a fine evening; I must be going,” said I stupidly, making a show at parting, and an ugly sense of annoyance with David Borland stirring in my heart. “But it will rain before morning,” said she, making to go too, but always looking to the hump of Dungoyne that bars the way to the Hielands. “I think, after all, Master Paul, I liked the old shoon better than the new ones.”
“Do you say so?” I asked, astonished at the irrelevance that came rapidly from her lips, as if she must cry it out or choke. “And how comes that?”
“Just because—” said she, and never a word more, like a woman, nor fair good-e'en nor fair good-day to ye, but off she went, and I was the stirk again.