“For speaking Scotch to me.”
“I beg your pardon, my lady. I forgot your ladyship was English.”
“Please forget it,” she said. “But I thank you for your songs too. It was the second I wanted to know about; the first I was certain was your own. I did not know you could enter like that into the feelings of an old man.”
“Why not, my lady? I never can see living thing without asking it how it feels. Often and often, out here at such a time as this, have I tried to fancy myself a herring caught by the gills in the net down below, instead of the fisherman in the boat above going to haul him out.”
“And did you succeed?”
“Well, I fancy I came to understand as much of him as he does himself. It’s a merry enough life down there. The flukes—plaice, you call them, my lady,—bother me, I confess. I never contemplate one without feeling as if I had been sat upon when I was a baby. But for an old man!—Why, that’s what I shall be myself one day most likely, and it would be a shame not to know pretty nearly how he felt—near enough at least to make a song about him.”
“And shan’t you mind being an old man, then, Malcolm?”
“Not in the least, my lady. I shall mind nothing so long as I can trust in the maker of me. If my faith should give way—why then there would be nothing worth minding either! I don’t know but I should kill myself.”
“Malcolm!”
“Which is worse, my lady—to distrust God, or to think life worth having without him?”