Billy looked at Ronnie, telegraphing: “Is it? It must be! Shall we tell her?”
Ronnie telegraphed back: “It is! It can be no other. You tell her.”
Lady Ingleby became aware of these crosscurrents.
“What is it, boys?” she said,
“Dear Queen,” cried Billy, with hardly suppressed excitement; “may we ask the cowboy person’s name?”
“Jim Airth,” replied Lady Ingleby, a sudden rush of colour flooding her pale cheeks.
“In that case,” said Billy, “he is the chap we met tearing along to the railway station, as if all the furies were loose at his heels. He looked neither to the right nor to the left, nor, for that matter, in front of him; and our dog-cart had to take to the path! So he did not see two old comrades, nor did he hear their hail. But he cannot possibly have been fleeing from your title, dear lady, and hardly from your property; seeing that his own title is about the oldest known in Scottish history; while mile after mile of moor and stream and forest belong to him. Surely you knew that the fellow who called himself ‘Jim Airth’ when out ranching in the West, and still keeps it as his nom-de-plume, is—when at home—James, Earl of Airth and Monteith, and a few other names I have forgotten;—the finest old title in Scotland!”