With her spectacles poised on the end of her nose, Meysie read the message. Her face took a hue greyer and duller than ever.
She looked at the lad she had once loved so well, and his shifty eye could not meet hers. He looked away over the moor, put his hands into his pockets, and whistled a music-hall catch, which sounded strangely in that white solitude.
"Weel do you ken that your faither has no sillar!" said Meysie. "You had a' the sillar, and what ye hae done with it only you an' your Maker ken. But ye shallna come into this hoose to annoy yer faither. Gang to the barn, and wait till I bring you what I can get."
The young man grumblingly assented, and within that chilly enclosure he stood swearing under his breath and kicking his heels.
"A pretty poor sort of prodigal's return this," he said, remembering the parable he used to learn to say to his father on Sunday afternoons; "not so much as a blessed fatted calf—only a half-starved cow and a deaf old woman. I wonder what she'll bring a fellow."
In a little while Meysie came cautiously out of the back door with a bowl of broth under her apron. The minister had not stirred, deep in his folio Owen. The young man ate the thick soup with a horn spoon from Meysie's pocket. Then he stood looking at her a moment before he took the dangling pencil again and wrote on the slate—
"Soup's good, but it's money I must have!"
Meysie bent her head towards him.
"Ye shallna gang in to break yer faither's heart, Clement; but I hae brocht ye a' I hae, gin ye'll promise to gang awa' where ye cam' frae. Your faither kens nocht aboot your last ploy, or that a son o' his has been in London gaol."
"And who told you?" broke in the youth furiously.