"Come back frae the door, lad. Dinna show y'rsel' tae the enemy. There be more speerin' for ye than hae love for y'r health. Have y'r wits aboot ye! Dinna be frettin' y'rsel' for Frances! The lassies aye rin fast enow tae the mon wi' sense to hold his ain!"
With that advice he motioned me to the only armchair in the room, and sitting down on the outer step to keep watch, began reading some theological disputation aloud.
"Odds, lad, ye should see the papist so'diers rin when I hae Calvin by me," he remarked.
"It's a pity you can't lay the theological thunderers on the doorstep to drive stray De Meurons off. Then you could come in and take this chair yourself," I answered, sitting back where no visitor could see me.
But Mr. Sutherland did not hear. He was deep in polemics, rolling out stout threats, that used Scriptural texts as a cudgel, with a zest that testified enjoyment. "The wicked bend their bow," began the rasping voice; but when he cleared his throat, preparatory to the main argument, my thoughts went wandering far from the reader on the steps. As one whose dream is jarred by outward sound, I heard his tones quaver.
"Aye, Frances, 'tis you," he said, and away he went, pounding at the sophistries of some straw enemy.
A shadow was on the threshold, and before I had recalled my listless fancy, in tripped Frances Sutherland, herself, feigning not to see me. The gray eyes were veiled in the misty fashion of those fluffy things women wear, which let through all beauty, but bar out intrusion. I do not mean she wore a veil: veils and frills were not seen among the colonists in those days. But the heavy lashes hung low in the slumbrous, dreamy way that sees all and reveals nothing. Instinctively I started up, with wild thoughts thronging to my lips. At the same moment Mr. Sutherland did the most chivalrous thing I have seen in homespun or broadcloth.
"Hoots wi' y'r giddy claver," said he, before I had spoken a word; and walking off, he sat down at some distance.
Thereupon his daughter laughed merrily with a whole quiver of dangerous archery about her lips.
"That is the nearest to an untruth I have ever heard him tell," she said, which mightily relieved my embarrassment.