Suddenly he turned them full upon her; they met hers, and the light rushed into them like a torrent, breaking forth after its way in a soulful smile.I hope my readers are not tired of the mention of Gibbie's smiles: I can hardly avoid it; they were all Gibbie had for the small coin of intercourse; and if my readers care to be just, they will please to remember that they have been spared many a he said and she said.Unhappily for me there is no way of giving the delicate differences of those smiles.Much of what Gibbie perhaps felt the more that he could not say it, had got into the place where the smiles are made, and, like a variety of pollens, had impregnated them with all shades and colours of expression, whose varied significance those who had known him longest, dividing and distinguishing, had gone far towards being able to interpret.In that which now shone on Mrs.Sclater, there was something, she said the next day to a friend, which no woman could resist, and which must come of his gentle blood.If she could have seen a few of his later ancestors at least, she would have doubted if they had anything to do with that smile beyond its mere transmission from "the first stock-father of gentleness." She responded, and from that moment the lady and the shepherd lad were friends Now that a real introduction had taken place between them, and in her answering smile Gibbie had met the lady herself, he proceeded, in most natural sequence, without the smallest shyness or suspicion of rudeness, to make himself acquainted with the phenomena presenting her.As he would have gazed upon a rainbow, trying perhaps to distinguish the undistinguishable in the meeting and parting of its colours, only that here behind was the all-powerful love of his own, he began to examine the lady's face and form, dwelling and contemplating with eyes innocent as any baby's.This lasted; but did not last long before it began to produce in the lady a certain uncertain embarrassment, a something she did not quite understand, therefore could not account for, and did not like.Why should she mind eyes such as those making acquaintance with what a whole congregation might see any Sunday at church, or for that matter, the whole city on Monday, if it pleased to look upon her as she walked shopping in Pearl-street? Why indeed? Yet she began to grow restless, and feel as if she wanted to let down her veil.She could have risen and left the room, but she had "no notion" of being thus put to flight by her bear-cub; she was ashamed that a woman of her age and experience should be so foolish; and besides, she wanted to come to an understanding with herself as to what herself meant by it.She did not feel that the boy was rude; she was not angry with him as with one taking a liberty; yet she did wish he would not look at her like that; and presently she was relieved.
Her hands, which had been lying all the time in her lap, white upon black, had at length drawn and fixed Gibbie's attention.They were very lady-like hands, long-fingered, and with the orthodox long-oval nails, each with a quarter segment of a pale rising moon at the root--hands nearly faultless, and, I suspect, considered by their owner entirely such--but a really faultless hand, who has ever seen?--To Gibbie's eyes they were such beautiful things, that, after a moment or two spent in regarding them across the length of the hairy hearthrug, he got up, took his footstool, crossed with it to the other side of the fire, set it down by Mrs.Sclater, and reseated himself.Without moving more than her fine neck, she looked down on him curiously, wondering what would come next; and what did come next was, that he laid one of his hands on one of those that lay in the satin lap; then, struck with the contrast between them, burst out laughing.But he neither withdrew his hand, nor showed the least shame of the hard, brown, tarry-seamed, strong, though rather small prehensile member, with its worn and blackened nails, but let it calmly remain outspread, side by side with the white, shapely, spotless, gracious and graceful thing, adorned, in sign of the honour it possessed in being the hand of Mrs.
Sclater,--it was her favourite hand,--with a half hoop of fine blue-green turkises, and a limpid activity of many diamonds.She laughed also--who could have helped it? that laugh would have set silver bells ringing in responsive sympathy!--and patted the lumpy thing which, odd as the fact might be, was also called a hand, with short little pecking pats; she did not altogether like touching so painful a degeneracy from the ideal.But his very evident admiration of hers, went far to reconcile her to his,--as was but right, seeing a man's admirations go farther to denote him truly, than the sort of hands or feet either he may happen to have received from this or that vanished ancestor.Still she found his presence--more than his proximity--discomposing, and was glad when Mr.Sclater, who, I forgot to mention, had left the room, returned and took Gibbie away to show him his, and instruct him what changes he must make upon his person in preparation for dinner.
When Mrs.Sclater went to bed that night she lay awake a good while thinking, and her main thought was--what could be the nature of the peculiar feeling which the stare of the boy had roused in her? Nor was it long before she began to suspect that, unlike her hand beside his, she showed to some kind of disadvantage beside the shepherd lad.Was it dissatisfaction then with herself that his look had waked? She was aware of nothing in which she had failed or been in the wrong of late.She never did anything to be called wrong--by herself, that is, or indeed by her neighbours.She had never done anything very wrong, she thought; and anything wrong she had done, was now a far away and so nearly forgotten, that it seemed to have left her almost quite innocent; yet the look of those blue eyes, searching, searching, without seeming to know it, made her feel something like the discomfort of a dream of expected visitors, with her house not quite in a condition to receive them.She must see to her hidden house.She must take dust-pan and broom and go about a little.For there are purifications in which king and cowboy must each serve himself.The things that come out of a man are they that defile him, and to get rid of them, a man must go into himself, be a convict, and scrub the floor of his cell.Mrs.Sclater's cell was very tidy and respectable for a cell, but no human consciousness can be clean, until it lies wide open to the eternal sun, and the all-potent wind; until, from a dim-lighted cellar it becomes a mountain-top.