"None whatever," he answers, gloomily enough.
"You've not questioned her in any way——"
"I'm a man of honor, Lord Stair," he responded, a bit in the air.
"Well, then," said I, "it will do no harm to set some of the obstacles before you that you may be allowed to deal with the situation bare-handed.
"Ye must see, Dandy, that Nancy Stair is different from other women and has been raised in a strange way. I'm no saying it's either a good way or a bad. I am saying that it's far from the accepted way women are bred up generally. It's no mere talent she has—for in a woman that's not harmful and frequently helps to entertain the children, as they come along; but with a girl, raised by men, whose name is ringing throughout the kingdom, who baffles every one by unfailing love and kindness, who has only the religion of making things better for others; a bit of a coquette, with such magnetism that one wants to touch her as one does a flower—I tell ye frankly, Danvers, as Pitcairn says, she's a dangerous contrivance of the Almighty's, and a man had best think many times before he takes her to his bosom as a wife."
"It's a singular state of affairs," Danvers answers, with a short laugh, "and one for which, I venture, even Nancy could find no bookish parallel. You tell me that you'd like me for a son-in-law, but warn me against your own daughter as a wife; while my father takes the other view of it: that he would like Nancy for his daughter, but thinks I'm far from being the one suited to her as a husband. Parents are not usually so dispassionate," he added, somewhat bitterly. I felt for the lad, and took a step along a side path.
"Ye're both over young as yet," I said, "and it's been less than a month since ye've known each other." And it was here that I had a taste of his fine temper, for he turned upon me in a sudden heat that made him splendid and natural to the eye.
"I have not heard that my Lord Stair was over-deliberate in his own wooing," he said.
I laughed aloud as he glowered at me, and put my hand on his shoulder, for I liked his impetuous ways and his deil's temper.
"There, there," I said, "gang your own gate. I but wanted ye to know what ye might expect in a wife. She'll contradict ye——"