"I'm sure he's very nice and has greatly improved. His manner to his father is beautiful, I think--such a nice mixture of deference and devotion."
"Fiddlesticks, Kitty!" said Drummond in his grumpiest tones. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Do you?" she asked saucily.
"It takes a man to know a man like Malcolm Mackinnon. I wonder how he can bear to loaf about idle--great big hulking fellow that he is!"
"Loaf about? But he's on leave, Neil, and he has had a hard year of skirmishing. You should hear him tell about it."
"Don't want to--shouldn't believe it if I did," said Neil, biting his lip and conscious that he had very nearly let the cat out of the bag.
He had not had an opportunity of private speech with Isla at Creagh, because he and his sister had found the Edens in the little drawing-room and had left them still there when they went away. The whole afternoon had been a disappointment, and when, as they neared the gate of Achree, Kitty had again ventured to suggest that they should pay a call he refused point-blank.
It seemed as likely as not that Malcolm was to become a bone of contention in the Glen and that very soon there would be two factions--one that believed in him and another that discredited him in everything.
Malcolm himself was the least concerned of them all.
The weather continuing beautiful and spring-like, he went out early and stayed out late, and they saw very little indeed of him at Creagh.