“Oh yes, my laty, fery respectable. Many coot men has to porrow nems of teir neighpours. We’ve all cot our fery own names, only in pad tays, my laty, we ton’t aalways know which tey are exactly; but we aal know which we are each other, and we get on fery coot without the names. We lay tem py with our Sappath clothes for a few tays, and they come out ta fresher and ta sweeter for keeping ta Sappath so long, my laty. And now she’ll pe playing you ta coronach of Clenco, which she was make herself for her own pipes.”
“I want to know first what Malcolm’s real name is,” persisted Lady Florimel.
“Well, you see, my laty,” returned Duncan, “some people has names and does not know them; and some people hasn’t names, and will pe supposing they haf.”
“You are talking riddles, Mr MacPhail, and I don’t like riddles,” said Lady Florimel, with an offence which was not altogether pretended.
“Yes surely—oh, yes! Call her Tuncan MacPhail, and neither more or less, my laty—not yet,” he returned, most evasively.
“I see you won’t trust me,” said the girl, and rising quickly, she bade him good-night, and left the cottage.
Duncan sat silent for a few minutes, as if in distress: then slowly his hand went out feeling for his pipes, wherewithal he consoled himself till bed-time.
Having plumed herself upon her influence with the old man, believing she could do anything with him she pleased, Lady Florimel was annoyed at failing to get from him any amplification of a hint in itself sufficient to cast a glow of romance about the youth who had already interested her so much. Duncan also was displeased, but with himself, for disappointing one he loved so much. With the passion for confidence which love generates, he had been for some time desirous of opening his mind to her upon the matter in question, and had indeed, on this very occasion, intended to lead up to a certain disclosure; but just at the last he clung to his secret, and could not let it go.
Compelled thereto against the natural impulse of the Celtic nature, which is open and confiding, therefore in the reaction cunning and suspicious, he had practised reticence so long, that he now recoiled from a breach of the habit which had become a second, false nature. He felt like one who, having caught a bird, holds it in his hand with the full intention of letting it go, but cannot make up his mind to do it just yet, knowing that, the moment he opens his hand, nothing can make that bird his again.
A whole week passed, during which Lady Florimel did not come near him, and the old man was miserable. At length one evening, for she chose her time when Malcolm must be in some vague spot between the shore and the horizon, she once more entered the piper’s cottage. He knew her step the moment she turned the corner from the shore, and she had scarcely set her foot across the threshold before he broke out: