“That was the day Quintin first spoke with her, when she gave him her nooning piece of bread to stay his hunger.”
“Aye,” said Alexander-Jonita; “better had he gone hungry all sermon-time than eaten of our Jean’s piece.”
“For shame, Alexander-Jonita!” I cried, “and a double shame to speak thus of a lassie that is, by your own tale, dying on her feet—and your sister forbye. I believe that ye are but jealous!”
She flamed up in sudden anger. If she had had a knife or a pistol in her hand, I believe she would have killed me.
“Get out of our ewe-buchts before I twist your impudent neck, Hob MacClellan!” she cried. “I care not a docken for any man alive—least of all for you and your brother. Yet I thought, from what I heard of his doings at the Presbytery, that he was more of a man than any of you. But now I see that he is feckless and feeble like the rest.”
“Ah, Jonita, you snooded folk tame us all. From David the King to Hob MacClellan there is no man so wise but a woman may tie him in knots about her little finger.”
“I thought better of your brother!” she said more mildly, her anger dying away as suddenly as it had risen, and I think she sighed.
“But not better of me!” I said.
She looked at me with contempt, but yet a contempt mightily pleasant.
“Good e’en to ye, Hob,” she cried. “I was not so far left to myself as to think about you at all!”