Toppy looked across the table, amazed and pained.
“Why—what’s wrong, Scotty?” he stammered.
“Tush, lad!” snapped the old man. “Dinna think I meant it. I only told Reivers so for the effect.”
Toppy was bewildered.
“I don’t see what you’re driving at, Scotty.”
“Listen, then; I ha’ told Reivers that you were getting the swell head so bad there was no working you. I ha’ told him you were at heart nothing but a fresh young whiffet who needed taming, and gi’n he made me keep you here I mysel’ would do the taming with an ax-handle. Do you begin to get my drift now, lad?”
“I confess I don’t,” admitted Toppy.
“Well, then—Reivers said: ‘That’s how I sized him up, too. But don’t you do the taming, Campbell,’ says he. ‘I am saving him for mysel’,’ he says. ‘But I will not put up with his lip longer,’ said I. ‘Man, Reivers,’ I says, ‘he thinks he’s a fighter, and the other day I slammed him on his back mysel’; and gi’n I had my old wind,’ I says, ‘I would have whipped him then and there.’
“Oh, carried on strong, losing my temper and all. ‘Five year ago I would ha’ broken his back, the big young fool!’ I says. ‘An’ he swaggers around me and thinks he’s a boss man because he licked that bloat Sheedy. Ah!’ I says. ‘I’ll stand it till he gives me lip again; then I’ll lay him out with whatever I have in my hands,’ says I.
“‘Don’t do it,’ says Reivers, smiling to see me so worked up, and surmising, as I intended he should, that I was angry only because I’d discovered that you were a better man than mysel’. ‘Save him for me,’ says he. ‘As soon as I have more time I will ’tend to him. In the meantime,’ he says, ‘let him go on thinking he is a good man.’