XL

MRS. SCLATER.

Gibbie was in a dream of mingled past and future delights, when his
conductor stopped at a large and important-looking house, with a
flight of granite steps up to the door. Gibbie had never been
inside such a house in his life, but when they entered, he was not
much impressed. He did look with a little surprise, it is true, but
it was down, not up: he felt his feet walking soft, and wondered for
a moment that there should be a field of grass in a house. Then he
gave a glance round, thought it was a big place, and followed Mr.
Sclater up the stair with the free mounting step of the Glashgar
shepherd. Forgetful and unconscious, he walked into the
drawing-room with his bonnet on his head. Mrs. Sclater rose when
they entered, and he approached her with a smile of welcome to the
house which he carried, always full of guests, in his bosom. He
never thought of looking to her to welcome him. She shook hands
with him in a doubtful kind of way.

"How do you do, Sir Gilbert?" she said. "Only ladies are allowed to
wear their caps in the drawing-room, you know," she added, in a tone
of courteous and half-rallying rebuke, speaking from a flowery
height of conscious superiority.

What she meant by the drawing-room, Gibbie had not an idea. He
looked at her head, and saw no cap; she had nothing upon it but a
quantity of beautiful black hair; then suddenly remembered his
bonnet; he knew well enough bonnets had to be taken off in house or
cottage: he had never done so because he never had worn a bonnet.
But it was with a smile of amusement only that he now took it off.
He was so free from selfishness that he knew nothing of shame.
Never a shadow of blush at his bad manners tinged his cheek. He
put the cap in his pocket, and catching sight of a footstool by the
corner of the chimney-piece, was so strongly reminded of his creepie
by the cottage-hearth, which, big lad as he now was, he had still
haunted, that he went at once and seated himself upon it. From this
coign of vantage he looked round the room with a gentle curiosity,
casting a glance of pleasure every now and then at Mrs. Sclater, to
whom her husband, in a manner somewhat constrained because of his
presence, was recounting some of the incidents of his journey,
making choice, after the manner of many, of the most commonplace and
uninteresting.

Gibbie had not been educated in the relative grandeur of things of
this world, and he regarded the