Margot’s colour heightened in embarrassment.
“Nothing special. Only a pass. It isn’t in that way that his cleverness shows.”
“Just so! Just so! I’ve met men like that before. Well, don’t spoil him, that’s all. Worship him in your heart, but not to his face. Looks to me as if he needed hardening up. A bit moony and sentimental. What? Don’t mind my saying so, do you?”
“Not a bit!” returned Margot proudly; but she cared horribly, all the same, and for the moment her liking for her companion suffered a distinct eclipse. “I know him, you see, and understand him as no stranger can do. He needs appreciation, for he is too apt to lose faith in himself, and he is not sentimental at all. He has plenty of sentiment, but that’s a different thing!”
“Yes—Um!” responded the Chieftain mischievously, his little eyes twinkling with amusement as they scanned the girl’s flushed, injured face. “Quite so! Sorry I spoke. He is, without doubt, an unusually gifted young man.” He bowed towards Margot, with an inference too transparent to be mistaken, and at which she was obliged to laugh, despite herself.
Ronald joined them at this moment, and looked from one to the other with his big, dreamy eyes. Margot was irritated to see that he looked even more absent-minded than usual, just when she was anxious that he should show to most advantage. He asked no questions in words, however, but Mr Elgood hastened to reply to the unspoken query in his eyes.
“Your sister and I have been having an argument. I don’t know how it came about. Hate arguments myself, especially on a holiday. Besides, it’s a waste of time. Whoever knew any one converted by an argument? Each one goes away more satisfied than ever that he is in the right, and that his opponent is talking rubbish; present company excluded, of course. So far as I can remember, we were discussing cleverness. If you were asked for a definition of a clever man, what would you say? How would you describe him?”
Ronald stood in the centre of the road, his hands clasped behind his back, his brows knitted in thought. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have answered such a question off-hand with a few light words; Ron bent the weight of his mind to it, with whole-hearted earnestness.
“Cleverness!” he repeated slowly. “It’s a poor word! There’s no depth in it. When a man is called clever, it means, I think, more an ability to display a superficial knowledge than any real, stored-up wisdom. It may even be a double-edged compliment!”
“Scored!” cried the Chieftain gaily, as he waved his stick in the air, and led the way forward with a jaunty tread. “Proposed, seconded, and carried that cleverness is a delusion to be sedulously avoided! Just what I always said. I’ve known clever people in my day—squillions of them, and, my hat! how stupid they were! That little lass dabbling in the lake is wiser than the whole crowd.” He pointed to a fair-haired child wading by the side of the tarn. “The spirit of childhood—that’s what we want! the spirit of joy in present blessings, and untroubled trust for the future. That little lass has a life of hardship and toil ahead—but what does she care? The sun shines to-day, and the funny wee mannie fra the inn is going to gie her a bawbee for goodies. It’s a bad habit which he has fallen into; a shocking bad habit, but he canna cure himself of it.” He threw a penny to the smiling, expectant child, then turning sharply to the left, led the way across the low-lying ground towards the base of the nearest hill.