I fear, to keep me from going. For I hated Betty in those days, as
children always hate a cross servant, and often get fond of a false
one. But Betty, like many active women, was false by her crossness only;
thinking it just for the moment perhaps, and rushing away with a bucket;
ready to stick to it, like a clenched nail, if beaten the wrong way with
argument; but melting over it, if you left her, as stinging soap, left
along in a basin, spreads all abroad without bubbling.

But all this is beyond the children, and beyond me too for that matter,
even now in ripe experience; for I never did know what women mean, and
never shall except when they tell me, if that be in their power. Now let
that question pass. For although I am now in a place of some authority,
I have observed that no one ever listens to me, when I attempt to lay
down the law; but all are waiting with open ears until I do enforce it.
And so methinks he who reads a history cares not much for the wisdom or
folly of the writer (knowing well that the former is far less than his
own, and the latter vastly greater), but hurries to know what the people
did, and how they got on about it. And this I can tell, if any one can,
having been myself in the thick of it.

The fright I had taken that night in Glen Doone satisfied me for a long
time thereafter; and I took good care not to venture even in the fields
and woods of the outer farm, without John Fry for company. John was
greatly surprised and pleased at the value I now set upon him; until,
what betwixt the desire to vaunt and the longing to talk things over,
I gradually laid bare to him nearly all that had befallen me; except,
indeed, about Lorna, whom a sort of shame kept me from mentioning. Not
that I did not think of her, and wish very often to see her again; but
of course I was only a boy as yet, and therefore inclined to despise
young girls, as being unable to do anything, and only meant to listen to