“That is a peculiar name!” remarked the lady, brightening at the sound of it, for it could, she thought, hardly belong to a peasant.
“It’s the name the lairds o’ Glenwarlock hae borne for generations,” answered Aggie; “though doobtless it’s no a name, as the maister wad say, indigenous to the country. Ane o’ them broucht it frae Italy, the place whaur the Pop’ o’ Rom’ bides.”
“And who is this Cosmo whose advice you would have me ask?”
“He’s the yoong laird himsel’, mem:—eh! but ye maun be a stranger no to ken the name o’ Warlock.”
“Indeed I am a stranger—and I can’t help wishing, if there is much more of this weather between us and England, that I had been more of a stranger still.”
“’Deed, mem, we hae a heap o’ weather up here as like this as ae snow-flake is til anither. But we tak what’s sent, an’ makna mony remarks. Though to be sure the thing’s different whan it’s o’ a body’s ain seekin’.”
This speech—my reader may naturally think it not over-polite—was happily not over-intelligible to the lady. Aggie, a little wounded by the reflection on the weather of her country, had in her emotion aggravated her Scottish tone.
“And where is this Cosmo? How are we to find him?”
“He’ll come onsoucht, mem. It’s only ’at he’s busy cleanin’ oot yer puir horse’ hivs ’at he disna p’y his respec’s to ye. But he’ll be blythe eneuch!”
“I thought you said he was a lord!” remarked the lady.