But Insie looked at him with surprise. “I am very much obliged to you,” she said; “but I never asked any one to give it me, unless it is the beck itself; and the beck never seems to grudge it.”
“You are not like anybody I ever saw. You speak very different from the people about here; and you look very different ten times over.”
Insie reddened at his steadfast gaze, and turned her sweet soft face away. And yet she wanted to know more. “Different means a great many things. Do you mean that I look better, or worse?”
“Better, of course; fifty thousand times better! Why, you look like a beautiful lady. I tell you, I have seen hundreds of ladies; perhaps you haven't, but I have. And you look better than all of them.”
“You say a great deal that you do not think,” Insie answered, quietly, yet turning round to show her face again. “I have heard that gentlemen always do; and I suppose that you are a young gentleman.”
“I should hope so indeed. Don't you know who I am? I am Lancelot Yordas Carnaby.”
“Why, you look quite as if you could stop the river,” she answered, with a laugh, though she felt his grandeur. “I suppose you consider me nobody at all. But I must get my water.”
“You shall not carry water. You are much too pretty. I will carry it for you.”
Pet was not “introspective;” otherwise he must have been astonished at himself. His mother and aunt would have doubted their own eyes if they had beheld this most dainty of the dainty, and mischievous of the mischievous (with pain and passion for the moment vanquished), carefully carrying an old brown pitcher. Yet this he did, and wonderfully well, as he believed; though Insie only laughed to see him. For he had on the loveliest gaiters in the world, of thin white buckskin with agate buttons, and breeches of silk, and a long brocaded waistcoat, and a short coat of rich purple velvet, also a riding hat with a gray ostrich plume. And though he had very little calf inside his gaiters, and not much chest to fill out his waistcoat, and narrower shoulders than a velvet coat deserved, it would have been manifest, even to a tailor, that the boy had lineal, if not lateral, right to his rich habiliments.
Insie of the Gill (who seemed not to be of peasant birth, though so plainly dressed), came gently down the steep brook-side to see what was going to be done for her.