“We are much in your reverence, housewife,” said John, nudging me so that I felt ashamed of his double-dealing. “That’s a bonny bairn,” he continued, lifting one of the children in his arms; “the rogue has your own good looks in every lineament.”
“Aye, aye,” said the woman, drily, spreading her blankets; “I would need no sight of tartan to guess your clan, master. Your flattery goes wrong this time, for by ill-luck you have the only bairn that does not belong to me of all the brood.”
“Now that I look closer,” he laughed, “I see a difference; but I’ll take back no jot of my compliment to yourself.”
“I was caught yonder,” said he to me a little later in a whisper in English, as we lay down in our corner. “A man of my ordinary acuteness should have seen that the brat was the only unspoiled member of all the flock.”
We slept, it might be a couple of hours, and wakened together at the sound of a man’s voice speaking with the woman outside the door. Up we sat, and John damned the woman for her treachery.
“Wait a bit,” I said. “I would charge her with no treachery till I had good proofs for it I’m mistaken if your lie about your wife and weans has not left her a more honest spirit towards us.”
The man outside was talking in a shrill, high voice, and the woman in a softer voice was making excuses for not asking him to go in. One of her little ones was ill of a fever, she said, and sleeping, and her house, too, was in confusion, and could she hand him out something to eat?
“A poor place Badenoch nowadays!” said the man, petulantly. “I’ve seen the day a bard would be free of the best and an honour to have by any one’s fire. But out with the bannocks and I’ll be going. I must be at Kilcumin with as much speed as my legs will lend me.”
He got his bannocks and he went, and we lay back a while on our bedding and pretended to have heard none of the incident It was a pleasant feature of the good woman’s character that she said never a word of her tactics in our interest.
“So you did not bring in your gentlemen?” said John, as we were preparing to go. “I was half afraid some one might find his way unbidden, and then it was all bye with two poor soldiers of fortune.”