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Old woman as she was, she had soon overtaken Cosmo, but he was sorely vexed, and did not speak to her. When after a while the heat of her wrath was abated, Grizzie could not endure the silence, for in every motion of Cosmo's body before her she read that she had hurt him grievously. "Laird!" she cried at last, "my stren'th's gane frae me. Gien ye dinna speyk to me, I'll drap."
This was a work that required a whole day, and while it was going forward under Cosmo's directions the passengers, and such of the crew as were not needed, found their way, led by the professor and the President, round a bluff into a kind of mountain lap, where they were astonished to see many rough cottages, situated picturesquely among the rocks, and small cultivated spaces, with grass and flowers, surrounding them.
If after that he read a chapter of his Bible, it was no more than was required by many a parent of many a boy who got little good of the task; but Cosmo's father had never enjoined it, on him; and when next he knelt down at his bedside, he did not merely "say his prayers."
Those who are of the world may defy, but they cannot ignore it. She had declined being a party to Cosmo's marrying his mother, but was not therefore prepared to expose him undefended to any one whatever who might wish to take him, even should she be of age unobjectionable; and she knew one who would at least be hampered by no scruples arising from conscious unfitness.
The contest went no farther, and Grizzie had had the best of it, as none knew better than she. In a minute or two the laird rose and went out, and Cosmo went with him. Before Cosmo's mother died, old Mrs. Warlock would have been indignant at the idea of sitting in the kitchen, but things had combined to bring her to it.
Another fact in Lorenzo's favor was that he had the warm support not only of the beautiful Ippolyta Maria, daughter of Cosmo's friend, Francesco Sforza of Milan, and now wife of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, King Ferrante's heir, as well as of Don Federigo, the monarch's younger son, who, along with Ippolyta, was a friend to the "New Learning," but he also had the whole body of Neapolitan humanists on his side, scarce one of whom but had experienced in some form or another the Medicean bounty.
Notwithstanding the familiarity I have shown between them Agnes had but lately begun to put the MASTER before Cosmo's name, and as often forgot it the girl, as they went towards the castle, although they were walking in deep dusk, and entirely alone, kept a little behind the boy not behind his back, but on his left hand in the next rank.
Upon one of these occasions, Grizzie brought from her treasury a tale which the laird remembered his grandmother's saying she too had heard when she was a child, and therewith it came into Cosmo's head to write it out, as nearly as he could, in Grizzle's words, and try a magazine with it.
"I doobt ye winna min' me takin' ye oot o' the Warlock ae day there was a gey bit o' a spait on?" said Agnes at length, looking up in Cosmo's face. "Eh, I never h'ard o' that, Aggie!" replied Cosmo. "I canna think to this day hoo it was ye fell in," she went on: "I hadna the chairge o' ye at the time. Ye maun hae run oot o' the hoose, an' me efter ye. I was verra near taen awa' wi' ye.
You have my offer: take it or leave it. You'll not get half as much if it come to the hammer. To whom else would it be worth anything, bedded in my property? If I say I don't want it, see if anybody will!" Cosmo's heart sank afresh.
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