"What?" Danvers cried, his face lit up with merriment.
"Nothing will ever make me tell," she said firmly, "nothing!"
"Whatever it was, it was moderate. You haven't a vocabulary sufficient for that situation, Nancy Stair," I laughed.
"Then, too, I'm no respecter of family," she went on, as though set for complete absolution. "It's mayhap because my own mother was an Irish gipsy——"
"Nancy!" Dandy cried with amazement.
"She was so," Nancy insisted, "and the present lord's grandfather was a strange old cummer who ran away with another man's wife——"
"Nancy!" I expostulated, "Nancy, you mustn't talk in that way of your forbears——"
"Why not?" she inquired.
"It's a thing ye can't explain, my dear; but it just isn't done," Dandy said.
"Is it not?" she asked, and there was a look in her eyes of amused amazement. "Is it not? You see, I, in my poor blind way, can not understand why the naming of a thing is worse than the being of it—but if ye say it is, I'm amiable. I'll give out that my forbears were all kings and queens of the Egyptians, and that I ate my haggis when I was a child from the seat of the throne. It makes no difference to me, for I'm something more than the Laird of Stair's daughter."