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Sir Robert's Fortune
CHAPTER IV
“I have been a fool,” said Lily. “I have not said any thing that I meant to say. I had a great many good reasons all ready, and I did not say one of them. I just said silly things. He played upon me like a fiddle; he made me so angry I could not endure myself, and then I had either to hold my tongue or say things that were silly and that I ought not to have said.”
“Oh, dear me, dear me,” cried Robina, “I just thought you would do that. If I had only been behind the door to give ye a look, Miss Lily. Ye are too impetuous when you are left to yourself.”
“I was not impetuous; I was just silly,” Lily said. “He provoked me till I did not know what I was saying, and then I held my tongue at the wrong places. But it would just have come to the same whatever I had said. He’ll not yield, and I’ll not yield, and what can we do but clash? We’re to start off for Dalrugas to-morrow, and that’s all that we have to think of now.”
“Oh, Miss Lily!” cried Robina. She wrung her hands, and, with a look of awe, added: “It’s like thae poor Poles in ‘Elizabeth’ going off in chains to that place they call Siberée, where there’s nothing but snow and ice and wild, wild forests. Oh, my bonnie lamb! I mind the woods up yonder where it’s dark i’ the mid of day. And are ye to be banished there, you that are just in your bloom, and every body at your feet? Oh, Miss Lily, it canna be, it canna be!”
“It will have to be,” said Lily resolutely, “and we must make the best of it. Take all the working things you can think of; I’ve been idle, and spent my time in nothings. I’ll learn all your bonnie lace stitches, Beenie, and how to make things and embroideries, like Mary, Queen of Scots. We’ll be two prisoners, and Dougal will turn the key on us every night, and we’ll make friends with somebody like Roland, the page, that will make false keys and let us down from the window, with horses waiting; and then we’ll career across the country in the dead of night, and folk will take us for ghosts; and then—we’ll maybe ride on broomsticks, and fly up to the moon!” cried Lily, with a burst of laughter, which ended in a torrent of tears.
“Oh, my bonnie dear! oh, my lamb!” cried Beenie, taking the girl’s head upon her ample breast. It is not to be imagined that these were hysterics, though hysterics were the fashion of the time, and the young ladies of the day indulged in them freely at any contrariety. Lily was over-excited and worn out, and she had broken down for the moment. But in a few minutes she had raised her head, pushed Beenie away, and got up with bright eyes to meet her fate.
“Take books too,” she cried, “as many as you can, and perhaps he’ll let us keep our subscription to the library, and they can send us things by the coach. And take all my pencils and my colors. I’ll maybe turn into a great artist on the moors that Uncle Robert says are so bonnie. He went on about his sunsets and his moonlights till he nearly drove me mad,” cried Lily, “mocking! Oh, Beenie, what hard hearts they have, these old men!”
“I would just like,” cried the faithful maid, “to have twa-three words with him. Oh, I should like to have twa-three words with him, just him and me by our twa sels!”
“And much good that would do! He would just turn you outside in with his little finger,” said Lily in high scorn. But naturally Robina was not of that opinion. She was ready to go to the stake for her mistress, and facing Sir Robert in his den was not a bad version of going to the stake. It might procure her instant dismissal for any thing Beenie knew; he might tell old Haygate, the old soldier-servant, who was now his butler, and an Englishman, consequently devoid of sympathy, to put her to the door; anyhow, he would scathe her with satirical words and that look which even Lily interpreted as mocking, and which is the most difficult of all things to bear. But Beenie had a great confidence that there were “twa-three things” that nobody could press upon Sir Robert’s attention but herself. She thought of it during the morning hours to the exclusion of every thing else, and finally after luncheon was over, when Lily was occupied with some youthful visitors, Beenie, with a beating heart, put her plan into execution. Haygate was out of the way, too, the Lord be praised. He had started out upon some mission connected with the wine-cellar; and Thomas, the footman, was indigenous, had been Tommy to Robina from his boyhood, and was so, she said, like a boy of her own. He would never put her to the door, whatever Sir Robert might say. She went down accordingly to the dining-room, after the master of the house had enjoyed his good lunch and his moment of somnolence after it (which he would not for the world have admitted to be a nap), and tapped lightly, tremulously, with all her nerves in a twitter, at the door. To describe what was in Beenie’s heart when she opened it in obedience to his call to come in was more than words are capable of: it was like going to the stake.
“Oh, Beenie! so it is you,” the master said.
“’Deed, it’s just me, Sir Robert. I thought if I might say a word–”
“Oh, say a dozen words if you like; but, mind, I am going out, and I have no time for more.”
“Yes, Sir Robert.” Beenie came inside the door, and closed it softly after her. She then took up the black silk apron which she wore, denoting her rank as lady’s maid, to give her a countenance, and made an imaginary frill upon it with her hands. “I just thought,” she said, with her head bent and her eyes fixed on this useful occupation, “that I would like to say twa-three words about Miss Lily, Sir Robert–”
“Oh,” he said, “and what might you have to say about Miss Lily? You should know more about her, it is true, than any of us. Has she sent you to say that she has recovered her senses, and is going to behave like a girl of sense, as I always took her to be?”
Beenie raised her eyes from her fantastic occupation, and looked at Sir Robert. She shook her head. She formed her lips into a round “No,” pushing them forth to emphasize the syllable. “Eh, Sir Robert,” she said at last, “you’re a clever man—you understand many a thing that’s just Greek and Hebrew to the likes of us; but ye dinna understand a lassie’s heart. How should ye?” said Beenie, compassionately shaking her head again.
Sir Robert’s luncheon had been good; he had enjoyed his nap; he was altogether in a good humor. “Well,” he said, “if you can enlighten me on that point, Beenie, fire away!”
“Weel, Sir Robert, do ye no think you’re just forcing her more and more into it, to make her suffer for her lad, and to have nothing to do but think upon him and weary for him away yonder on yon solitary moor? Eh, it’s like driving her to the wilderness, or away to Siberée, that awfu’ place where they send the Poles, as ye will read in ‘Elizabeth,’ to make them forget their country, and where they just learn to think upon it more and more. Eh, Sir Robert, we’re awfu’ perverse in that way! I would have praised him up to her, and said there was no man like him in the world. I would have said he was just the one that cared nothing for siller, that would have taken her in her shift—begging your pardon for sic a common word; I would have hurried her on to fix the day, and made every thing as smooth as velvet; and then just as keen as she is for it now I would have looked to see her against it then.”
“I allow,” said Sir Robert, with a laugh, “that you have a cloud of witnesses on your side; but I am not quite sure that I put faith in them. If I were to hurry her on to fix the day, as you say, I would get rid, no doubt, of the trouble; but I am much afraid that Lily, instead of starting off on the other tack, would take me at my word.”
“Sir,” said Beenie in a lowered voice, coming a step nearer, “if we were to leave it to him to show her the contrary, it would be more effectual than any thing you could say.”
“So,” said Sir Robert, with a long whistle of surprise, “you trust him no more than I do? I always thought you were a woman of sense.”
“I am saying nothing about that, Sir Robert,” Beenie replied.
“But don’t ye see, you silly woman, that he would take my favor for granted in that case, and would not show her to the contrary, but would marry her in as great haste as we liked, feeling sure that I had committed myself, and would not then draw back?”
“He would do ye nae justice, Sir Robert, if he thought that.”
“What do you mean, you libellous person? You think I would encourage her in her folly in the hope of changing her mind, and then deceive and abandon her when she had followed my advice? No,” he said, “I am not so bad as that.”
“You should ken best, Sir Robert,” said Beenie, “but for me, I would not say. But if ye will just permit me one more word. Here she has plenty of things to think of: her parties and her dress, and her friends and her other partners—there’s three young leddies up the stair at this moment talking a’ the nonsense that comes into their heads—but there she would have no person–”
“Not a soul, except Dougal and his wife,” said Sir Robert, with a chuckle.
“And nothing to think of but just—him. Oh, Sir Robert, think what ye are driving the bairn to! No diversions and no distractions, but just to think upon him night and day. There’s things she finds to object to in him when he’s by her side—just like you and me. But when she’s there she’ll think and think upon him till she makes him out to be an angel o’ light. He will just get to be the only person in the world. He will write to her–”
“That he shall not do! Dougal shall have orders to stop every letter.”
Beenie smiled a calm, superior smile. “And ye think Dougal—or any man in the world—can keep a lad and lass from communication. Eh, Sir Robert, you’re a clever man! but just as ignorant, as ignorant as any bairn.”
Sir Robert was much amused, but he began to get a little impatient. “If they can find means of communicating in spite of the solitude and the miles of moor and Dougal, then I really think they will deserve to be permitted to ruin all their prospects,” he said.
“Sir Robert!”
“No more,” he said. “I have already heard you with great patience, Beenie. I don’t think you have thrown any new light on the subject. Go and pack your boxes; for the coach starts early to-morrow, and you should have every thing ready both for her and yourself to-night.”
Beenie turned away to the door, and then she turned round again. She stood pinching the imaginary frill on her apron, with her head held on one side, as if to judge the effect. “Will that be your last word, Sir Robert?” she said. “She’s your brother’s bairn, and the only one in the family—and a tender bit thing, no used to unkindness, nor to be left all her lane as if there was naebody left in the world. Oh, think upon the bit thing sent into the wilderness! It is prophets and great men that are sent there in the way of Providence, and no a slip of a lassie. Oh, Sir Robert, think again! that’s no your last word?”
“Would you like me to ring for Haygate and have you turned out of the house? If you stay another minute, that will be my last word.”
“Na,” said Beenie, “Haygate’s out, Sir Robert, and Tommy’s not the lad–”
“Will you go, you vixen?” Sir Robert shouted at the top of his voice.
“I’ll go, since I cannot help it; but if it comes to harm, oh, Sir Robert! afore God the wyte will be on your head.”
Beenie dried her eyes as she went sorrowfully upstairs. “The wyte will be on his head; but, oh, the sufferin’ and the sorrow that will be on hers!” Beenie said to herself.
But it was evident there was no more to be said. As she went slowly upstairs with a melancholy countenance, she met at the door of the drawing-room the three young ladies who had been—according to her own description—“talking a’ the nonsense that came into their heads,” with Lily in the midst, who was taking leave of them. “Oh, there is Robina,” they all cried out together. “Beenie will tell us what it means. What is the meaning of it all? She says she is going away. Beenie, Beenie, explain this moment! What does she mean about going away?”
“Eh, my bonnie misses,” cried Beenie, “who am I that I should explain my mistress’s dark sayings? I am just a servant, and ken nothing but what’s said to me by the higher powers.”
There was what Beenie afterward explained as “a cackle o’ laughing” over these words, which were just like Beenie, the girls said. “But what do you know from the higher powers? And why, why is Lily to be snatched away?” they said. Robina softly pushed her way through them with the superior weight of her bigness. “Ye must just ask herself, for it is beyond me,” she said.
Lily rushed after her as soon as the visitors were gone, pale with expectation. “Oh, Beenie, what did he say?” she cried.
“What did who say, Miss Lily? for I do not catch your meaning,” said the faithful maid.
“Do you mean to say that you did not go down stairs–”
“Yes, Miss Lily, I went down the stairs.”
“To see my uncle?” said the girl. “I know you saw my uncle. I heard your voice murmuring, though they all talked at once. Oh, Beenie, Beenie, what did he say?”
“Since you will have it, Miss Lily, I did just see Sir Robert. There was nobody but me in the way, and I saw your uncle. He was in a very good key after that grand dish of Scots collops. So I thought I would just ask him if it was true.”
“And what did he say?”
Beenie shook her head and said, “No,” in dumb show with her pursed-out lips. “He just said it was your own doing, and not his,” she added, after this impressive pantomime.
“Oh, how did he dare to say so! It was none of my doing—how could he say it was my doing? Was I likely to want to be banished away to Dalrugas moor, and never see a living soul?”
“He said you wouldna yield, and he wouldna yield; and in that case, Miss Lily, I ask you what could the like of me do?”
“I would not yield,” said Lily. “Oh, what a story! what a story! What have I got to yield? It was just him, him, his own self, and nobody else. He thinks more of his own will than of all the world.”
“He said you would not give up your love—I am meaning young Mr. Lumsden—no, for any thing he could say.”
“And what would I give him up for?” cried Lily, changing in a moment from pale to red. “What do I ever see of Sir Robert, Beenie? He’s not up in the morning, and he’s late at night. I have heard you say yourself about that club– I see him at his lunch, and that’s all, and how can you talk and make great friends when your mouth is full, and him so pleased with a good dish and angry when it’s not to his mind? Would I give up Ronald, that is all I have, for Sir Robert with his mouth full? And how does he dare to ask me—him that will not do a thing for me?”
“That is just it,” said Beenie, shaking her head; “you think a’ the reason’s on your side, and he thinks a’ the reason is on his; and he’ll have his own gate and you’ll have your will, and there is no telling what is to be done between you. Oh, Miss Lily, my bonnie dear, you are but a young thing. It’s more reasonable Sir Robert should have his will than you. He’s gone through a great deal of fighting and battles and troubles, and what have you ever gone through but the measles and the king-cough, that couldna be helped? It’s mair becoming that you should yield to him than he should yield to you.”
“And am I not yielding to him?” said Lily. “I just do whatever he tells me. If he says, ‘You are to come out with me to dinner,’ though I know how wearisome it will be, and though I had the nicest party in the world and all my own friends, I just give in to him without a word. I wear that yellow gown he gave me, though it’s terrible to behold, just to please him. I sit and listen to all his old gentlemen grumbling, and to him paying his compliments to all his old ladies, and never laugh. Oh, Beenie, if you could hear him!” and here Lily burst into the laugh which she had previously denied herself. “But when he comes and tells me to give up Ronald for the sake of his nasty, filthy siller–”
“Miss Lily, that’s no Mr. Ronald’s opinion.”
“Oh!” cried Lily, stamping her foot upon the ground, while hot tears rushed to her eyes, “as if that did not make it a hundred times worse!” she cried.
And then there was a pause, and Beenie, with great deliberation, began to take out a pile of dresses from the wardrobe, which she opened out and folded one after another, patting them with her plump hands upon the bed. Lily watched her for some moments in silence, and then she said with a faltering voice: “Do you really think, then, that there is no hope?”
Robina answered in her usual way, pursing out her lips to form the “No” which she did not utter audibly. “Unless you will yield,” she said.
“Yield—to give up Ronald? To meet him and never speak to him? To let him think I’m a false woman, and mansworn? I will never do that,” Lily said.
“But you’ll no marry him, my lamb, without your uncle’s consent?”
“He’ll not ask me!” cried Lily, desperate. “Why do you torment me when you know that is just the worst of all? Oh, if he would try me! And who is wanting to marry him—or any man? Certainly not me!”
“If you were to give your uncle your word—if you were to say, ‘We’ll just meet at kirk and market and say good-even and good-morrow,’ but nae mair. Oh, Miss Lily, that is not much to yield to an old man.”
“I said as good as that, but he made no answer. Beenie, pack up the things and let us go quietly away, for there is no help for us in any man.”
“A’ the same, if I were you, I would try,” said Robina, taking the last word.
Lily said nothing in reply; but that night, when she was returning with Sir Robert from a solemn party to which she had accompanied him, she made in the darkness some faltering essay at submission. “I would have to speak to him when we meet,” she said, “and I would have to tell him there was to be no more—for the present. And I would not take any step without asking you, Uncle Robert.”
Sir Robert nearly sprang from his carriage in indignation at this halting obedience. “If you call that giving up your will to mine, I don’t call it so!” he cried. “‘Tell him there is to be no more—for the present!’ That is a bonnie kind of submission to me, that will have none of him at all.”
“It is all I can give,” said Lily with spirit, drawing into her own corner of the carriage. Her heart was very full, but not to save her life could she have said more.
“Very well,” said Sir Robert; “Haygate has his orders, and will see you off to-morrow. Mind you are in good time, for a coach will wait for no man, nor woman either; and I’ll bid you good-by now and a better disposition to you, and a good journey. Good-night.”
And at seven o’clock next morning, in the freshness of the new day, the North mail sure enough carried Lily and Robina away.
CHAPTER V
A highland moor is in itself a beautiful thing. When it is in full bloom of purple heather, with all those breaks and edges of emerald green which betray the bog below, with the sweet-scented gale sending forth its odor as it is crushed underfoot, and the yellow gorse rising in broken lines of gold, and here and there a half-grown rowan, with its red berries, and here and there a gleam of clear dark water, nothing can be more full of variety and the charm of wild and abounding life. But when the sky is gray and the weather bleak, and the heather is still in the green, or dry with the gray and rustling husks of last year’s bloom; when there is little color, and none of those effects of light and shade which make a drama of shifting interest upon the Highland hills and lochs, all this is very different, and the long sweep of wild and broken ground, under a low and dark sky, becomes an image of desolation instead of the fresh and blooming and fragrant moor of early autumn. Dalrugas was a tall, pinched house, with a high gable cut in those rectangular lines which are called crow steps in Scotland, rising straight up from the edge of the moor. The height and form of this gave a parsimonious and niggardly look—though the rooms were by no means contemptible within—which was increased by the small windows pierced high up in the wall. There was no garden on that side, not so much as the little plot to which even a cottage has a right. Embedded within the high, sharp-cornered walls behind was a kitchen-garden or kale-yard, where the commonest vegetables were grown with a border of gooseberries and a few plants of sweet-william and appleringie; but this was not visible to give any softness to the prospect. The heather came up uncompromisingly, with a little hillock of green turf here and there, to the very walls, which had once been whitewashed, and still in their forlorn dinginess lent a little variety to the landscape; but this did but add to the cold, pinched, and resistant character of the house. It looked like a prim ancient lady, very spare, and holding her skirts close round her in the pride of penury and evil fortune. The door was in the outstanding gable, and admitted directly into a low passage from which a spiral stair mounted to the rooms above. On the ground-floor there was a low, dark-pannelled dining-room and library full of ancient books, but these rooms were used only when Sir Robert came for shooting, which happened very rarely. The drawing-room upstairs was bare also, but yet had some lingerings of old-fashioned grace. From the small, deep-set, high windows there was a wide, unbroken view over the moor. The moor stretched everywhere, miles of it, gray as the low sky which hung over it, a canopy of clouds. The only relief was a bush of gorse here and there half in blossom, for the gorse is never wholly out of blossom, as every-body knows, and the dark gleam of the water in a cutting, black as the bog which it was meant to drain. The dreary moorland road which skirted the edge passed in front of the house, but was only visible from these windows at a corner, where it emerged for a moment from a group of blighted firs before disappearing between the banks of heather and whin, which had been cut to give it passage. This was the only relief from the monotony of the moor.
It was in this house that Lily and her maid arrived after a journey which had not been so uncheerful as they anticipated. A journey by stage-coach through a beautiful country can scarcely be dreary in the worst of circumstances. The arrivals, the changes, the villages and towns passed through, the contact with one’s fellow-creatures which is inevitable, shake off more or less the most sullen discontent; and Lily was not sullen, while Beenie was one of the most open-hearted of human creatures, ready to interest herself in every one she met, and to talk to them and give her advice upon their circumstances. The pair met all sorts of people on their journey, and they made almost as many friendships, and thus partially forgot the penitential object of their own travels, and that they were being sent off to the ends of the earth.
It was only when “the gig” met them at the village, where the coach stopped on its northern route, that their destination began to oppress either the mistress or the maid. This was on the afternoon of a day which had been partially bright and partially wet, the best development of weather to be hoped for in the North. The village was a small collection of cottages, partly with tiled roofs, making a welcome gleam of color, but subdued by a number of those respectable stone houses with blue tiles, which were and are the ideal of comfortable sobriety, which, in defiance of all the necessities of the landscape, the Scotch middle class has unfortunately fixed upon. The church stood in the midst—a respectable oblong barn, with a sort of long extinguisher in the shape of a steeple attached to it. On the outskirts the cottages became less comfortable and more picturesque, thatched, and covered with lichens. It was a well-to-do village. The “merchant,” as he was called, i. e., the keeper of the “general” shop, was a Lowland Scot, very contemptuous of “thae Highlanders,” and there was a writer or solicitor in the place, and a doctor, besides the minister, who formed a little aristocracy. The English minister so called, that is, the Episcopalian, came occasionally—once in two or three Sundays—to officiate in a smaller barn, without any extinguisher, which held itself a little apart in a corner, not to mingle with the common people who did not possess Apostolical Succession; though, indeed, in those days there was little controversy, the Episcopalians being generally of that ritual by birth, and unpolemical, making no pretensions to superiority over the native Kirk.
The gig that met the travellers at Kinloch-Rugas was a tall vehicle on two wheels, which had once been painted yellow, but which was scarcely trim enough to represent that type of respectability which a certain young Thomas Carlyle, pursuing the vague trade of a literary man in Edinburgh, had declared it to be. It was followed closely by a rough cart, in which Beenie and the boxes were packed away. They were not large boxes. One, called “the hair trunk,” contained Lily’s every-day dresses, but no provision for any thing beyond the most ordinary needs, for there was no society nor any occasion for decorative garments on the moors. Beenie’s box was smaller, as became a serving-woman. These accessories were all in the fashion of their time, which was (like Waverley, yet, ah, so unlike!) sixty years since or thereabout—in the age before railways, or at least before they had penetrated to the distant portions of the country. The driver of the gig was a middle-aged countryman, very decent in a suit of gray “plaidin”—what we now call tweed—with a head of sandy hair grizzled and considerably blown about by the wind across the moor. His face was ruddy and wrinkled, of the color of a winter apple, in fine shades of red and brown, his shaggy eyebrows a little drawn together—by the “knitting of his brows under the glaring sun,” and the setting of his teeth against the breeze. He said, “Hey, Beenie!” as his salutation to the party before he doffed his bonnet to the young lady. Lily was not sure that it was quite respectful, but Dougal meant no disrespect. He was a little shy of her, being unfamiliar with her grown-up aspect, and reverential of her young ladyhood; but he was at his ease with Robina, who was a native of the parish, the daughter of the late blacksmith, and “weel connectit” among the rustic folk. It would have been an ease to Dougal to have had the maid beside him instead of the mistress, and it was to Beenie he addressed his first remarks over his shoulder, from pure shyness and want of confidence in his own powers of entertaining a lady. “Ye’ll have had a long journey,” he said. “The coach she’s aye late. She’s like a thriftless lass, Beenie, my woman. She just dallies, dallies at the first, and is like to break her neck at the end.”
“But she showed no desire to break her neck, I assure you,” said Lily. “She was in no hurry. We have just taken it very easy up hill and down dale.”
“Ay, ay!” he said, “we ken the ways o’ them.” With a glance over his shoulder: “Are you sure you’re weel happit up, Beenie, for there’s a cauld wind crossing the moor?”
“And how is Katrin, Dougal?” Lily asked, fastening her cloak up to her throat.
“Oh, she’s weel eneuch; you’ll see little differ since ye left us last. We’re a wee dried up with the peat-reck, and a wee blawn aboot by the wind. But ye’ll mind that fine, Beenie woman, and get used to’t like her and me.”
Lily laid impatient fingers on the reins, pulling Dougal’s hand, as if he had been the unsteady rough pony he drove. “Speak to me,” she said, “you rude person, and not to Beenie. Do you think I am nobody, or that I cannot understand?”
“Bless us all! No such a thought was in my head. Beenie, are ye sitting straight? for when the powny’s first started whiles he lets out.”
“Let me drive him!” Lily cried. “I’ll like it all the better if he lets out; and you can go behind if you like and talk to Beenie at your ease.”
“Na, na,” said Dougal, with a grin. “He kens wha’s driving him. A bit light hand like yours would have very sma’ effect upon Rory. Hey, laddies! get out of my powny’s way!”
Rory carried out the prognostics of his driver by tossing his shaggy head in the air, and making a dash forward, scattering the children who had gathered about to stare at the new arrivals; though before he got to the end of the village street he had settled into his steady pace, which was quite uninfluenced by any skill in driving on Dougal’s part, but was entirely the desire and meaning of that very characteristic member of society—himself. The day had settled into an afternoon serenity and unusual quietness of light. The mountains stood high in the even air, without any dramatic changes, Schehallion, with his conical crest, dominating the lesser hills, and wearing soberly his mantle of purple, subdued by gray. The road lay for a few miles through broken ground, diversified with clumps of wood, wind-blown firs, and beeches tossing their feathery branches in the air, crossing by a little bridge a brown and lively trout stream, which went brawling through the village, but afterward fell into deeper shadows, penetrating between close fir-woods, before it reached the edge of the moor, round which it ran its lonely way. Lily’s spirits began to rise. The sense of novelty, the pleasant feeling of arrival, and of all the possibilities which relieve the unknown, rose in her breast. Something would surely happen; something would certainly be found to make the exile less heavy, and to bring back a little hope. The little river greeted her like an old friend. “Oh, I remember the Rugas,” she cried. “What a cheery little water! Will they let me fish in it, Dougal? Look how it sparkles! I think it must remember me.”
“It’s just a natural objick,” said Dougal. “It minds naebody; and what would you do—a bit lady thing—fishing troot? Hoots! a crookit pin in a burn would set ye better, a little miss like you.”
