she was off on another scent.
"What are you going to be when you grow up?"
"Ah!"—with animation. "I'm going to be a big man."
"You can't make yourself that. You're not very big now."
"I've not done growing yet, and I'm very strong, and I've never been ill in my life. Besides——"
"I've just had measles and whooping-cough. That's why I'm here."
He nodded, as much as to say, "Yes, that's just the kind of thing girls would have"; and went on, "And then I'm going to be an explorer."
"O-o-o-h!" with snapping eyes. "Where?"
"I don't know where. Anywhere where nobody's ever been before."
She devoured him with hungry appreciation. His face was so very clean, so radiantly bright, and the sparks in his blue eyes kindled answering sparks in her own. For she too possessed a lively imagination, and a spirit many times the size of her body.
"But will you be able to? Are you very rich?"
"Rich? No, I'm not rich, but I'm not that poor either—not just now. I bought this last week," with a touch of superior pride, as he hauled out a Latin grammar, sixth-hand, but still boasting covers. "When I've finished it I'll feel poor till I get the next. But that's not yet."
"Wouldn't you like to be very rich?"
"I d'n' know. I never tried it."
"My father is very rich."
"Is he? And what are you going to do when you grow up?"
"Oh, I'm going to be a lady."
"Yes, that's about all you can be, I suppose," he nodded, and looked really sorry for her.
"I shall be very rich, and I shall do just what I like—except darning and needlework. They're hijjus!"
"Hideous," he said, with a touch of pedantic reproof which consorted oddly with his jacket and trousers.
"I always say 'hijjus' when it's quite too awful and past words. How would you like to be a manager of one of my father's mills?"
"I don't know," he said, regarding her doubtfully. "I'm thinking perhaps I wouldn't make a very good manager. Not yet."
Then her hand happened to touch her pocket, which reminded her of her lunch.
"Are you hungry?" she asked. "I'll sit down here and you shall have some of my lunch, and you shall tell me the names of all those hills and lochs opposite. Aren't they splendid?"
"Ay, they're grand. I've been watching them for a year now."
She wrestled her dainty little packet out of her pocket, and sat down on a rock looking out over the wonderful panorama in front. The boy sat down on another rock and hauled out a piece of newspaper in which were wrapped some broken pieces of thick oatcake and some rough fragments of cheese.
"Do you like oatcake and cheese?" she asked.
"Rather!"
"Won't you have some of my sandwiches?" she said politely, but not without anxiety.
He looked at the delicate provision, and said stoutly—
"No, thank you. I like this best."
And, as the little lady possessed the dainty but vigorous appetite of the fully-restored-to-health-and-got-to-make-up-for-lost-time, and as she was only thirteen, she was not rude enough to press him unduly.
"Now tell me the names of all those hills and lochs," she said, and he proceeded to tell her all she wanted to know.
"Yon's Dumbarton,"—between bites; "you can see Glasgow some days," and she regarded him doubtfully.
"And yon's the Gare Loch. That big fellow with the shoulders is Ben Lomond. The one humped up like this is The Cobbler. That other big one is Ben Ihme. That's Loch Long and a bit of Loch Goil, and yon's Holy Loch and Ben More."
When she had eaten her tiny sandwiches, and her two small cookies with jam inside, and her two biscuits, and had learned the names and personal peculiarities of all the hills and lochs, and he had finished the last crumbs of his oatcake and cheese, he convoyed her past the black menace down below, as far as the next stone dyke, and told her how she could shorten her journey by cutting across some fields, and so get down to the Inverkip road, and eventually to Ashton and the "caurs."
He watched the sprightly little figure, with the gleaming mane of hair and swinging skirts and twinkling brown shoes, till she reached the next distant corner, waved his hand to her, received an answering wave from her, and turned back to his life—his unruly beasts, his treasured Euclid and Latin grammar, his dreams, his hopes, and ever so much more than he knew.
Waved his hand to her, and received an answering wave.
But Prop. 47 was not amenable that afternoon. He smiled at thought of the windmill, and looked up to see her standing before him with her sweet childish face and questioning eyes. He thought much of the winsome little lady, both then and for a long time afterwards. He scanned the winding path by the Cut each day in hopes that she might come again. But she was away home to London, and at last only a memory of her remained, and that growing dimmer and dimmer till it was little more than a sentiment—simply the warm glow of a pleasant impression.
And she? Ah, she wrought better than she knew that day.
For when she got home from her great adventure, and had been duly scolded by her aunts for undertaking so much, when they had only expected her to go up to the Cut and down again in a couple of hours or so—when she reached home, old Mr. MacTavish, the minister, was there, and he rejoiced in her prattling tongue, and delighted in drawing her out.
She enlarged upon the very uncommon herd-laddie she had met up on the Cut—on his satisfactory looks, his unique cleanliness, his fearlessness in the matter of wild beasts, his understanding, and his aims in life. Her thoughts were full of him, and when Miss Jean Arnot had something on her mind her little world was by way of hearing of it.
Old Mr. MacTavish had been a herd-laddie himself in his time.
Suffecit!
CHAPTER II
THE MAN
Ten years later Miss Jean Arnot was visiting her aunts in Greenock again. Not but what she had been there many times in between, but this is the only occasion of which we need take note.
There had been many changes in these ten years.
For one thing, Jean's father was dead, and she was a very wealthy young woman. In many respects she was still very like the little Jean of earlier times.
