“Ah, Dalrugas itself,” said Sir Robert, a little abashed. It was true—if the others had closed their doors, so had Dalrugas; if they were left to silence and decay, so had his own house been. Other reasons had operated in his case, but the result was the same. “I’m afraid, Dougal,” he said, “that my poor little Lily has had an ill time of it, which I never intended. Give me your opinion on the subject. Your wife’s a very decent woman—and an excellent cook, I will say that for her—but she’s like them all, she stands up for her own side. She would have me think that my niece has been very solitary among the moors. Now that was never what I intended. Tell me true: has Miss Lily been a kind of prisoner, and seen nobody, as Katrin says?”
Dougal pushed his mass of hair to one side as if it had been a wig. “The young leddy,” he said, “had none o’ the looks of a prisoner, Sir Robert. I’ve seen her when you would have thought it was the very sun itsel’ shining on the moor.”
“You’re very poetical, Dougal,” said Sir Robert, with a laugh.
“And she would whiles sing as canty as the birds, and off upon Rory as light as a feather down to the market to see all the ferlies o’ the toun, and into the Manse for her tea.”
“That sounds cheerful enough,” said the old gentleman, “though the ferlies of the town were not very exciting, I suppose. And old Blythe’s still at the Manse? He’s one of the old set left at least.”
“He’s an altered man noo, Sir Robert; never a step can he make out o’ his muckle chair; they say he’s put into his bed at nicht, but it’s a mystery to me and many more how it’s done, for he’s a muckle heavy man. But year’s end to year’s end he’s just living on in his muckle chair.”
“Lord bless us!” Sir Robert said. He looked down on his own still shapely and not inactive limbs with an involuntary shiver of comparison, and then he added, with a half laugh: “A man that liked his good dinner, and a good bottle of wine, and a good crack, with any of us.”
“That did he, Sir Robert!” Dougal said.
“Poor old Blythe! I must go and see him,” said the happier veteran, with an unconscious stretch of his capable legs, and throwing out of his chest. It was not any pleasure in the misfortune of his neighbor which gave him this glow of almost satisfaction. It was the sense of his own superiority in well-being, the comparison which was so much in his own favor. The comparison this morning had not been in his own favor and he had not liked it. He felt now, let us hope with a sensation of thankfulness, how much better off he was than Mr. Blythe.
“Well, well, the Manse was always something, Dougal,” he said. “Manses are cheerful places; there’s always a great coming and going. I hope there was nobody much out of her own sphere that Miss Lily met there—no young ministers coming up here after her, eh? They have a terrible flair for lasses with tochers, these young ministers, Dougal?”