“There’s no occasion to be violent,” said the farmer. “I dinna expect that he’ll use force to make you accept his offer, which is weel meant and kind, whatever else it may be. I canna say I understand a’ this fury on your part; and there’s no good that I can see in deciding this very moment and no other. I would like you to sleep upon it and turn it over in your mind. Such an offer doesna come every day to the Holy Loch. I’m no the man to seek help,” said Big Colin, “but there’s times when it’s more generous to receive than to give.” The mistress had followed her son wistfully with her eyes through all his changes of countenance and gesture. She was not simply surprised like her husband, but looked at him with unconscious insight, discovering by intuition what was in his heart--something, at least, of what was in his heart--for the anxious mother too was mistaken, and rushed at conclusions which Colin himself was far from having reached. “There’s plenty of time to decide,” said the farmer’s wife; “and I’ve that confidence in my laddie that I ken he’ll do nothing from a poor motive, nor out of a jealous heart. There never were ony sulky ways, that ever I saw, in ony bairn of mine,” said Mrs. Campbell; “and if there was one in the world that was mair fortunate than me, I wouldna show a poor spirit towards him, because he had won. Whiles it’s mair generous to receive than to give, as the maister says; and whiles it’s mair noble to lose than to win,” said the mistress, with a momentary faltering of emotion in her voice. She thought the bitterness of hopeless love was in her boy’s heart, and that he was tempted to turn fiercely from the friendship of his successful rival. And she lifted her soft eyes, which were beaming with all the magnanimous impulses of nature, to Colin’s face, who did not comprehend the tenderness of pity with which his mother regarded him. But, at least, he perceived that something much higher and profounder than anything he was thinking of was in the mistress’s thoughts; and he turned away somewhat abashed from her anxious look.