‘You’ve been fighting!’ said his mother.
‘I haena,’ he returned with rude indignation. ‘Gien I had been, div ye think I wud hae grutten?’
‘You forget yourself, laird!’ remarked Mrs. Gordon, more annoyed with his Scotch than the tone of it. ‘I would have you remember I am mistress of the house!’
‘Till I marry, mother!’ rejoined her son.
‘Oblige me in the meantime,’ she answered, ‘by leaving vulgar language outside it.’
Francis was silent; and his mother, content with her victory, and in her own untruthfulness of nature believing he had indeed been fighting and had had the worse of it, said no more, but began to pity and pet him. A pot of his favourite jam presently consoled the love-wounded hero—in the acceptance of which consolation he showed himself far less unworthy than many a grown man, similarly circumstanced, in the choice of his.
CHAPTER X
DAVID AND FRANCIS
One day there was a market at a town some eight or nine miles off, and thither, for lack of anything else to do, Francis had gone to display himself and his pony, which he was riding with so tight a curb that the poor thing every now and then reared in protest against the agony he suffered.
On one of these occasions Don was on the point of falling backward, when a brown wrinkled hand laid hold of him by the head, half pulling the reins from his rider’s hand, and ere he had quite settled again on his forelegs, had unhooked the chain of his curb, and fastened it some three links looser. Francis was more than indignant, even when he saw that the hand was Mr. Barclay’s: was he to be treated as one who did not know what he was about!
‘Hoots, my man!’ said David gently, ‘there’s no occasion to put a water-chain upo’ the bonny beastie: he has a mou like a leddy’s! and to hae ’t linkit up sae ticht is naething less nor tortur til ’im!—It’s a won’er to me he hasna brocken your banes and his ain back thegither, puir thing!’ he added, patting and stroking the spirited little creature that stood sweating and trembling.