He has a way of giving you your change which seems to say, "Is it the full change you expect?" If you keep your hand held out, and appear to examine what he gives you, his look says: "You are one of the wideawake sort; we understand each other."
Needless to say that the Highlander is glad to see the tourist, as the hunter is glad to see game.
Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Englishmen, Americans, all are sure of a welcome—he loves them all alike.
Still, perhaps of all the foreign tourists who visit his hunting-grounds, it is the Americans who have found the royal road to his heart.
"The Americans are a great people," said a Highland innkeeper to me one day. "When you present an Englishman with his bill, he looks it over to see that it is all right. He will often dispute and haggle. The American is a gentleman; he would think it beneath him to descend to such trifles. When you bring him his account, he will wave your hand away and tell you he does not want your bill; he wants to know how much he owes you, and that's the end of it."
His idea of a perfect gentleman is an innocent who pays his bills without looking at them.
When he recognises a tourist as a compatriot, you may imagine what a wry face he makes.
Just as the hotel-keeper of Interlaken or Chamounix relegates all his Swiss customers to the fifth floor rooms, so Donald gives the cold shoulder to all the Scotch who come his way. With them he is obliged to submit his bills to the elementary rules of arithmetic, and be careful that two and two make only four.
It is said that of all the inhabitants of the earth, the Paris badaud is the most easy to amuse. I think, for my part, that his London equivalent runs him very close. However this may be, the native of London is an easy prey to the wily Scot.