He will not therefore forgive us, if we
suffer you to depart before he has seen you, and expressed for you that
kindness which induced him to take you under his protection." "Heavens!"
replied the shepherdess "this is all ceremony and folly, and therefore
cannot be of so much consequence as the peace of my father, and the
consolation of my mother. Tell him, that I thank him, and that my father
shall thank him too, if he will come to our hut. Tell him that I am
sorry for my foolish weakness, that gave him so much trouble, and made
me be so needlessly frightened, when we came to a place where I have met
with nothing but kindness; but I could not help it. And so that is
enough; for if my Edwin had been in his place, and had seen a stranger
shepherdess in the distress that I was, he would surely have done as
much.
"Say so to your lord, as you call him, for I would not seem ungrateful.
But yet I will thank you a great deal more than I do him. For what did
he do for me? He took me, and hurried me away, and paid no attention to
my tears and expostulations. Well, but I need not have been alarmed. So
it seems. But I did not like his looks; they were not kind and
good-natured, but fierce and frightful. And so as soon as he had brought
me here, much against my will, he went away and left me.
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