ne so, matters would have become
simplified, and much more horror and trouble avoided, for Mr. Lindsey was
just then at the beginning of a straight track and my silence turned him
away from it, to get into more twisted and obscure ones. But--I said
nothing. And why? The answer is simple, and there's the excuse of human
nature in it--I was so much filled with the grand prospects of my
stewardship, and of all it would bring me, and was so highly pleased with
Sir Gilbert Carstairs for his advancement of my fortunes, that--here's
the plain truth--I could not bring myself to think of, or bother with,
anything else. Up to then, of course, I had not said a word to my mother
or to Maisie Dunlop of the stewardship--I was impatient to tell both. So
I held my peace and said nothing to Mr. Lindsey--and presently the office
work for the day was over and I was free to race home with my grand news.
Is it likely that with such news as that I would be troubling my head any
longer about other folks' lives and deaths?

That, I suppose, was the most important evening I had ever spent in my
life. To begin with, I felt as if I had suddenly become older, and
bigger, and much more important. I became inclined to adopt magisterial
airs to my mother and my sweetheart, laying down the law to them as to
the future in a fashion which made Maisie poke fun at me for a crowing
cockerel. It was only natural that I should suffer a little from swelled
head that night--I should not have been human otherwise. But Andrew
Dunlop took the conceit out of me with a vengeance when Maisie and I told
him the news, and I explained everything to him in his back-parlour. He
was at times a man of many words, and at times a man of few words--and
when he said little, he meant most.

"Aye!" said he. "Well, that's a fine prospect, Hugh, my man, and I wish
you well in it. But there'll be no talk of any wedding for two years--so
get that notion out of your heads, both of you! In two years you'll just
have got settled to your new job, and you'll be finding out how you suit
your master and how he suits you--we'll get the preliminaries over, and
see how things promise in that time. And we'll see, too, how much money
you've saved out of your salary, my man--so you'll just not hear the
wedding-bells calling for a couple of twelvemonths, and'll behave
yourselves like good children in the meanwhile. There's a deal of things
may happen in two years, I'm thinking."

He might have