When I related the tale of that gallant Francis who was able to lead Sir Thomas Randolph and thirty soldiers up the perilous rocks to surprise the Castle at night, having learned the way when sweethearting down in the Grass-market, Barrie confessed that she had heard the story already. Jack Morrison had found it in some old book he had bought at the shop under John Knox's house, in the High Street. There was no use trying to work up or classify historic thrills for her in this vast heart of Scotland; she had been given them all, with generous additional thrills from private hearts, Scottish and American.
"Has every single one of those chaps proposed to you?" I flung the question in her face. "You might tell your Mentor."
"Oh, not Donald Douglas's cousin!" she answered hastily. "He's engaged to some one in the Highlands."
"Good heavens, then all the rest have done it, in a bunch!"
"I think you're horrid!" she said indignantly. "I've always heard that girls don't tell such things to any one."
"They do to their brothers—of the pen, if they have any such. Besides, you don't need to tell. I'm a regular Sherlock Holmes where people I—like, are concerned, and I know what's been happening to you this afternoon. A manna-rain of proposals, in the wilderness of Edinburgh Castle. Many girls would have accepted them all, and then sorted them out to see which they liked best; but I have a shrewd idea from the look of the gentlemen's backs that they are now one and all your adopted brethren."
"It's almost wicked to joke on such a subject," Barrie reproached me, trying not to laugh, "and it's not nice of you to make fun of them, just because you consider yourself superior, as an author who is always analyzing people's minds and motives. It's not as if they were so much in love with me that they had to propose in a hurry for their own sakes. It's not that at all; but only because they thought it wouldn't be very convenient for—Barbara to have me live with her, travelling about so much, or if she should marry. So they felt as if something ought to be done for me, you know, as soon as possible."
"Sainted, unselfish young men!" I murmured. "But I don't consider myself superior, as it happens. I'd do the same thing in a minute if I thought there were the faintest chance of your giving me an answer different from theirs. Is there?"
"Don't talk nonsense!" she exclaimed. "But of course, I'm happy to say, I know you don't mean it."
"Well, if you're happy to say that, I'll leave you your fond illusions for the present," I returned. "But, as girl to man, tell me; don't you rather like being proposed to?"