"Miss Gibb," he continued, addressing the governess, "we—that is, Mr. Dawson chiefly—have made a wonderful discovery. This boy you see before you, and who is called Jack Mackenzie, is my niece—no, I mean nephew—by the brother's side, as it were, and consequently first cousin-german to—I say, Mr. Dawson, bother it all, I'm getting a bit mixed again."
Miss Gibb laughed.
"So you's my fist tousin, 'ittle boy, is you?—Miss Dibb, tiss my fist tousin for me; I can't be boddled tissing 'ittle boys."
Miss Gibb dutifully did as she was told; at which condescension Johnnie was more puzzled than ever. He would have given three of his best marbles at that moment to any one who could have told him where he was in particular, and what day of the week it was.
But the interview was soon brought to an end; and when Johnnie went back to his home in Summer Loaning, a very droll story indeed he had to tell Mrs. Malony.
"Och, sure," she cried, "I always tould Malony that poor dear Mrs. Mackenzie wasn't the same as us at all, at all; that she was a lady under a cloud, sure enough. And troth and I'm roight. And it's a foine gintleman you'll be, Johnnie, some day entoirely."
* * * * *
Old Mrs. Mackenzie of Drumglen in Perthshire was certainly all that Tom and Mr. Dawson had said. She was nothing if not orthodox and conservative to a degree.
She belonged to a very old and aristocratic family in the north of Inverness-shire. The family, however, had the misfortune to be somewhat poor, and ill-natured people did say that when Miss Stuart married Mr. Mackenzie, a Jamaica merchant, it was more from love of money and what it could bring than from love of Mac himself. But, of course, ill-natured people will say anything, and charity is a flower that is not half so well cultivated as it ought to be.
Never mind. Miss Stuart was at the time of her wedding stately, tall, and handsome, and—a stanch Jacobite. Mr. Mackenzie, on the other hand, was on the weather-side of forty, and though wiry enough, he was about the same colour as a cake of gingerbread. That is what Jamaica and the West Indies had done for him.