United States or Mauritania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Some twenty feet from the surface of the loch, he reached a point whence clearly, in Donal's judgment, there was no possibility of farther descent. But Donal was never more mistaken; for that instant Gibbie flashed from the face of the rock head foremost, like a fishing bird, into the lake.
The old man, it is true, followed, to make a place for Gibbie, but there was still an interval between them sufficient to afford space to the hope that none of the evils she dreaded would fall upon her to devour her. Flushed, angry, uncomfortable, notwithstanding, her face glowed like a bale-fire to the eyes of her husband, and, I fear, spoiled the prayer but that did not matter much.
"Why?" Miss Gibbie sat upright. "I thought you were one myself. Your unremitting attendance upon Lily was carrying my suggestions rather far. In matters of compromise a man is a master. He'd fall in love with anything if there was nothing else to fall in love with. Mary has been something of a trail, and how did I know your vanity had not surrendered to the soothing balm of adoration?
Gibbie gave a great sigh to think of the girl that loved the hill and the heather and the burns, shut up in the city, and every Sunday going to the great church with which in Gibbie's mind was associated no sound of glad tidings. To him Glashgar was full of God; the North church or Mr. Sclater's church well, he had tried hard, but had not succeeded in discovering temple-signs about either.
From listening to his own lips through Gibbie's ears, he not only understood many things better, but, perceiving what things must puzzle Gibbie, came sometimes, rather to his astonishment, to see that in fact he did not understand them himself.
Miss Gibbie nibbled the tip of her turkey-wing fan for a moment of stillness, unbroken save for the twitter of birds in the trees near by, then turned once more to the man by her side. "I'll be honest with you. I don't want her to marry you or anybody else. I want to keep her with me; but I'll be square. It will be hands off until she decides for herself.
If old Admiral Bloodgood's ghost had been chasing them, they couldn't have run faster. Nobody but Miss Gibbie would have dressed them up that way." "And nobody but Miss Gibbie would have come back at me as she did when I told her how uneasy I had been by the boys' absence at dinner," said Mrs. Moon, who had moved nearer the window.
In an hour or so she made her appearance I can hardly say reappeared, she was so altered. She entered the room neither blushing nor smiling, but wiping the tears from her eyes like a too blessed child. What Mrs. Sclater would have felt, I dare hardly think; for there was "the horrid woman" arrayed as nearly after her fashion as Gibbie had been able to get her up!
But the picture of Sir George, by the help of whisky and the mild hatching oven of Mistress Croale's parlour, softly breaking from the shell of the cobbler, and floating a mild gentleman in the air of his lukewarm imagination, and poor wee Gibbie trotting outside in the frosty dark of the autumn night, through which the moon keeps staring down, vague and disconsolate, is hardly therefore the less pathetic.
Sclater, having reflected that Ginevra was under age and they must be careful, resumed for the nonce, with considerable satisfaction, his office of guardian, and holding no previous consultation with Gibbie, walked to the cottage, and sought an interview with Mr. Galbraith, which the latter accorded with a formality suitable to his idea of his own inborn grandeur.
Word Of The Day