It was a Lover and His Lass

by Mrs. Oliphant

"Eh? What was that you were saying?"

"Are those two ladies—village people? I mean do they live hereabout?"

Adam turned slowly half round upon him. His large and somewhat hazy blue eyes uprose from between the bush of his shaggy eyebrows and the redness of his beard, and contemplated the young man curiously.

"Yon's—the misses at the castle," Adam said.

"The misses?" Still Lewis did not take in what was meant; he repeated the word with a smile.

"Our misses, the leddies at the castle," said Adam, laconically.

Lewis was so profoundly astonished that he gave a cry of dismay.

"The ladies at the castle?—Miss Murray of Murkley?" he said.

"Ay," said Adam, once more fixing him with a tranquil but somewhat severe gaze. Then after a minute's reflection, "And wherefore no?"

Then Lewis laughed loud and long, with a mixture of excitement and derision in his astonishment: the derision was at himself, but Adam was not aware of this, and a shade of offence gradually came over as much as was visible of his face.