"Old Steadfast, you are ruddy and joyous! How long since I was here, in the winter? Four months? Well, you've changed. What is it?... Is it love? Are you in love?"
"If I am—" Glenfernie rose and paced the room. Coming to one of the narrow windows, he stood and looked out and down upon bank and brae and wood and field and moor. He returned to the table. "I'll tell you about it."
He told. Ian sat and listened. The light played about him, shook gold dots and lines over his green coat, over his hands, his faintly smiling face, his head held straight and high. He was so well to look at, so "magnificent"! Alexander spoke with the eloquence of a possessing passion, and Ian listened and felt himself to be the sympathizing friend. Even the profound, unreasonable, unhumorous idealism of old Steadfast had its quaint, Utopian appeal. He was going to marry the farmer's granddaughter, though he might, undoubtedly, marry better.... Ian listened, questioned, summed up:
"I have always been the worldly-wise one! Is there any use in my talking now of worldly wisdom?"
"No use at all."
"Then I won't!... Old Alexander the Great, are you happy?"
"If she gives me her love."
Ian dismissed that with a wave of his hand. "Oh, I think she'll give it, dear simpleton!" He looked at Glenfernie now with genial affection. "Well, on the whole, and balancing one thing against another, I think that I want you to be happy!"
Alexander laughed at that minification. "And my happiness is big enough—or if I get it it will be big enough—not in the least to disturb our friendship country, Ian!"
"I'll believe that, too. Our relations are old and rooted."