"Well—it is pretty much like leaving a lighted match near gunpowder; there will be a blow-up sometime when least expected."
"May you not be all wrong in your views of this matter?" said Lord Rohallion, who somewhat shared his wife's feeling of annoyance; "I must question Miss Warrender herself; I feel assured that she will conceal nothing from me."
"Not even that she allowed this sprightly young fellow to kiss her in the avenue, eh?" said the sneering voice of the Master, who appeared suddenly at the back of the stone chair, which he had approached unseen, and whereon he lounged with a twig in his mouth, and a Newmarket hat knowingly depressed very much over his right eye. "It was very pretty and becoming, wasn't it, dominie? ha! ha!"
"Cosmo!" exclaimed his mother, with positive anger.
"Osculatio—a kissing-match—eh, dominie?"
"There may be no harm in a kiss, my good sir," said the pedant, gravely, for though mightily shocked, as became the precentor of Rohallion kirk, on hearing of such undue familiarity, he felt himself bound to defend his young pupil and friend.
"No harm, you think?"
"Indubitably not."
"A rare old put it is! But what do such little favours lead to?"
"They may lead to reconciliation, as when the king kissed Absalom; or be the token of welcome, as when Moses kissed his father-in-law; or they may indicate homage, as we find in the book of Esther."