“If that is the Duncan Gilderoy you want, I can take you to him,” he said, rather unwillingly.
“Come on, then.”
The other boys fell back, staring hard, as their comrade walked off beside the man in the English clothes. The man carried a small travelling-bag in one hand, and before they had gone many yards he offered it to his guide.
“Would you like to earn a sixpence?” he said pleasantly.
The boy flushed again and frowned angrily. Then he stopped dead, and, turning round, shouted back to the group they had just left:
“Here, Jock, carry his bag, and he’ll give you sixpence.”
Jock proved to be the boy who had guessed which Duncan Gilderoy the stranger wanted. He darted from the rest, and ran up to seize the bag, and then, having taken possession of it, fell in on the other side of its owner.
The Londoner felt he had made a mistake of some kind. The boy who had refused an offer of sixpence commanded his respect. Gazing at him again, it began to dawn upon him that this bare-footed young Highlander carried himself with dignity, and that he held up his head in a way that is not taught in Board-schools. The next moment the boy, aware that he was being studied, lowered his head with a defensive instinct, and glanced at the man out of the corner of his dark eyes. The glance was at once sly and naïve, like that of some bright, wicked bird.
“And what is your name, my boy?” the Englishman asked, with a touch of middle-class patronage. He could not quite get the bare feet out of his mind.
“I am Alistair Stuart.”