“Well, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, dangerously genial, “you see I’m left all alone. My friends they have gone to their beds, as if they were callants home from the school.”
“The gentlemen would be geyan tired,” said Dougal; “they’re English, and no accustomed to our moors, and some of them no so young either. You never kent that, Sir Robert, you that were to the manner born.”
“But too auld for that sort of thing, Dougal, now.”
“Maybe, and maybe not,” said Dougal. “There’s naething like the auld blood and the habit o’t. I’d sooner see you cock a rifle, Sir Robert, though I say it as shouldna, than the whole three of them.”
“No, no, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, “that’s flattery. They’re not very good shots, then,” he said, with a smile. He was not indisposed to hear this of them, though they were his friends.
“Well, Sir Robert, I wouldna say, on their ain kind o’ ground, among the stubble and that kind o’ low-country shooting, which, I’m tauld, is the common thing there; but no on our moors. When you’re used to the heather, it’s a different thing.”
“No doubt there is something in that,” Sir Robert allowed with discreet satisfaction. And then he added: “What’s this I hear from your wife about all the old neighbors, and that there’s scarcely a house open I knew in my young days?”
“What is that, Sir Robert?” said Dougal cautiously.
“The neighbors, ye dunce, my old friends that were all about the countryside when I was young, and that I thought would be friends for my poor little Lily when she came here. I’m told there’s not one of them left.”
Dougal did not readily take up what was meant, but he held his own firmly. “There’s been nae gentleman’s house,” he said, “what you would call open and receiving visitors round about Dalrugas as long as I mind—no more than Dalrugas itsel’.”