Explore "Heather and Snow" by George MacDonald on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Phemy went seldom to the castle, but the young laird and she met pretty / often: there was solitude enough in that country for an army of lovers. / Once or twice Gordon, at Phemy's entreaty, went and took tea with her / at her father's, and was cordially received by the schoolmaster, who / had no sense of impropriety in their strolling out together afterward, / leaving him well content with the company of his books. Before this had / happened twice, all the town was talking about it, and predicting evil. / Phemy heard nothing and feared nothing; but if feeling had been weather / and talk tempest, she would have been glad enough to keep within. So / rapidly, however, did the whirlwind of tongues extend its giration that / within half a week it reached Kirsty, and cast her into great trouble: / her poor silly defenceless Phemy, the child of her friend, was in / danger from the son of her father's friend! Her father could do / nothing, for Francis would not listen to him, therefore she herself / must do something! She could not sit still and look on at the devil's / work! Having always been on terms of sacred intimacy with her mother, / she knew more of the dangers of the world, while she was far safer from / them, than such girls as their natural guardians watch instead of / fortifying, and understood perfectly that an unwise man is not to be / trusted with a foolish girl.
She felt, therefore, that inaction on her / part would be faithlessness to the teaching of her mother, as well as / treachery to her father, whose friend's son was in peril of doing a / fearful wrong to one to whom he owed almost a brother's protection for / his schoolmaster's sake. She did not believe that Francis _meant_ Phemy / any harm, but she was certain he thought too much of himself ever to / marry her, and were the poor child's feelings to go for nothing? She / had no hope that Phemy would listen to expostulation from her, but she / must in fairness, before she _did_ anything, have some speech with her!