"Here 's a man for you!" he said joyfully.
"Who?" I demanded, but might have spared myself the question. There was another interval of silence, followed by an uproarious outburst:
"Oh, I do love Stevenson's 'damns'! They 're great! Hear this—"
He read a portion of a letter which included a choicely selected expletive.
"Jamie!" It was a decided protest on his mother's part; but I laughed aloud, for I, too, knew what he meant. I, too, loved the varied and picturesque "damns" of those letters that had been so much to me in the past few years. As I looked at Jamie, another Scotsman, with the thin bright eager face, I knew at once that, without realizing it, I had connected his appearance with that of Robert Louis Stevenson, his countryman. And how like the two spirits were!
"I wonder," I said to myself, "I wonder if this same Jamie Macleod also has the inner impulse to write!" And, having said that in thought, I looked at Jamie Macleod through different glasses.
We let him mercifully alone; but I went on with my work, reading titles, classifying, placing, finding genuine pleasure in speculating on the "calibre" of the owner.
At nine, Marie entered with the porridge; Cale followed her.
"Here endeth the first chapter," I said to Cale. "We 'll try to get all the books on the shelves to-morrow; then we can have one day of rest before they come."
"You kinder speak as if two extra men in the fam'ly would make some difference," said Cale, smiling down at me from his place by the mantel.