The girl looked at him directly almost for the first time. Was he making fun of her? She wondered. His face seemed earnest enough, and handsome. It was not possible, she concluded.
"Ye'll be a stranger in these parts?" she answered interrogatively, because she was a Scottish girl, and one question for another is good national barter and exchange.
Gregory Jeffray was about to declare his names, titles, and expectations; but he looked at the girl again, and saw something that withheld him.
"Yes," he said, "I am staying for a week or two over at Barr."
The boat grounded on the pebbles, and the girl went to let down the hinged end. It had seemed a very brief passage to Gregory Jeffray. He stood still by his mare, as though he had much more to say.
The girl placed her cleek in the corner, and moved to leave the boat. It piqued the young man to find her so unresponsive. "Tell me what you mean by 'a cry across the Black Water,'" he said.
The girl pointed to the strip of sullen blackness that lay under the willows upon the southern shore.
"That is the Black Water of Dee," she said simply, "and the green point among the trees is the Rhonefoot. Whiles there's a cry from there. Then I go over in the boat, and set them across."
"Not in this boat?" he said, looking at the upturned deal table swinging upon its iron chain.
"That is the boat that goes across the Black Water of Dee," she said, pointing to a small boat which lay under the bank on the left.
"And do you never go anywhere else?" he asked, wondering how she came by her beauty and her manners.
"Only to the kirk on the Sabbaths," she said, "when I can get some one to watch the boat for me."
"I will watch the boat for you!" he said impulsively.
The girl looked distressed. This gay gentleman was making fun of her, assuredly. She did not answer. Would he never go away?
"That is your way," she said, pointing along the track in front. Indeed, there was but one way, and the information was superfluous.
The end of the white, rose-smothered boathouse was towards them. A tall, bowed woman's figure passed quickly round the gable.
"That is my aunt Annie," said the girl; "my aunt Barbara is confined to her bed."
The girl glanced at him. He was certainly not making fun of her now.