"That's well enough," he retorted, "where women are but gentle female animals. But take a woman with a mind or gift—such as Nancy Stair has—and ye'll find a complication in the affair not to be solved with a club."
The two of us had no small sport with Danvers over his condition, for he had fallen in love to such an extent that he would start sentences which he forgot to finish, make the most irrelevant remarks, or drop into a-dreaming in the midst of talk, so that his father fell to recalling him by shouting:
"View Halloo!" in a very loud voice, as they do on the hunting field, following it up by talk full of a jeering seriousness, as it were:
"Do you think, Danvers, in—er—your present state, you would be able to get this letter to the post?"
Or,
"Would ye be like to fall into a sound slumber if ye started to ring for a stable-boy, Dand?"
Or,
"Do you think you could charge your mind, without danger to it, with passing me the brandy?" all of which the lad bore with an amused smile and open shamelessness.
One night, after dinner, during this time, I recall that there was a discussion over the cutting of a roadway between our houses, and after Sandy had thrown in the fatherly suggestion that if Danvers remained at Arran much longer the road would be worn by his footsteps with no expense to us, Danvers, who was awaiting Nancy to walk on the porch with him, began:
"I think——"