"You are very kind, sir," said John Erskine again: he was touched, but half amused as well. It seemed so unlikely that he should require the old general's helping hand. And then they talked of the country, and of their previous lives and diverse experiences. Sir James was one of those primitive men, much more usual a generation ago than now, whose knowledge of life, which to his own thinking was profound and extensive, left out the greater part of what in our days is known as life at all. He knew Scotland and India, and nothing more. He was great in expedients for dealing with the natives on one hand, and full of a hundred stories of village humour, fun, and pawkiness on the other. To hear him laugh over one of these anecdotes till the tears stood in his clear, warm blue eyes, which were untouched by any dimness of time, was worth all the witticisms ever printed; and to see him bend his fine old brows over the characteristics of his old subjects in India, and the ameliorations of character produced by British rule, firmness, and justice, was better than philosophy. But with that which young John Erskine knew as life he had no acquaintance. Save his own country and the distant East, the globe was wrapped in dimness to him. He had passed through London often, and had even transacted business at the Horse Guards, though an Indian officer in those days had little to do with that centre of military authority; but he had a mingled awe and horror of "town," and thought of the Continent as of a region of temptation where the devil was far more apparent than in other places, and sought whom he might devour with much more openness and less hindrance than at home. And when our young man, who flattered himself a little on his knowledge of society and the world, as he understood the phrase, unfolded himself before the innocent patriarch, their amazement at each other was mutual. Old Sir James contemplated John in his knowledge with something of the same amused respect which John on his side felt for him in his ignorance. To each there was in the other a mixture of a boy and a sage, which made them each to each half absurd and half wonderful. An old fellow, who must have seen so much to have seen so little! and a mere bit of a lad, Sir James said to himself, who knew nothing about India or anything serious, yet had seen a vast deal, and had very just notions, and spoke like a man of the world when you came to talk to him! It was thus the senior who did most justice to the junior, as is usually the case.
"I am afraid," Sir James said, "that you'll find our country-side but dull after all you've seen. We're pleased with ourselves, as most ignorant people are; we think we're good enough company on the whole, but music, or the play, or art, or that kind of thing, you'll find us wanting in. I'm afraid they find us very wanting at Lindores; but as for a kind welcome, whenever you like and however you like, and a good Scotch dinner, and sometimes a dance, if that will content you in the way of company——"
"I should be hard to please if that would not content me," said John. "I hope you will give me the chance."
"That we will—that we will," said Sir James, heartily; and then he added, "we have no young people about us—Lady Montgomery and me. Our two children are as far from children now as their father and mother. They are both in India, and their families grown up and gone out to them. So we have nothing young of our own about the house; but don't go too fast, we're not without attraction. In a week, I think, we're expecting a visitor that will make the place bright—Miss Barrington—Nora Barrington; you'll have heard of her by this time. She's a great favourite in the country. We are all keen to have her and to keep her. I'm not afraid that a young man will find us dull when we've Nora in the house."
Here John, who had become suspicious of the name of this girl whom everybody insisted on recommending to him, eagerly protested that he should want no foreign attraction to the house in which the kind old general was.
"Foreign! No, she's not foreign," said Sir James; "far from that. A bonnie English girl, which, after a bonnie Scotch lassie, is by far the best thing going. We must stand up for our own first," said the old soldier, laughing; "but nothing foreign—nothing foreign: if you want that, you'll have to go to Lindores."
John felt—he could scarcely tell why—slightly irritated by these references to Lindores. He said, somewhat elaborately, "They are the only people I really know in the county. I met them long ago—on the Continent."
"Ah!—ay; that's just what I say—for anything foreign, you'll have to go to the Castle," said Sir James, a little doubtfully. "But," he added, after a moment's pause, "I hope you'll take to us and your own country, and need no 'foreign aid of ornament,' eh? You must forgive me. I'm an old fellow, and old-fashioned. In my time it used to be thought that your French and Italians were—well, no better than they should be. Germans, they tell me, are a more solid race; but I know little difference—I know little difference. You'll say that's my ignorance," said this man of prejudice, beaming upon his companion with a smile in which there was a little deprecation, but a great deal of simple confidence. It was impossible not to condone the errors of a censor so innocent.
"If you knew them, you would not only see a great deal of difference, but I think you would like them a great deal better than you suppose," John said.
"Very likely—very likely," cried Sir James. It occurred to him suddenly that if his young friend had indeed, poor lad, been brought up among those "foreign cattle," an unfavourable opinion of them might hurt his feelings; and this was the last thing the old man would have done—even to a foreigner in person, much less to a son of the soil temporarily seduced by the wiles of strangers. And then he repeated his formula about being an old fellow and old-fashioned. "And you'll mind to expect nothing but broad Scotch at Chiefswood," he cried, laughing and waving his hand as he rode away, after the hearty invitation with which every visitor ended. "You'll get the other at Lindores."