“Indeed, and that you were,” said he shamefacedly, “and I'm affronted to tell it. But when Grant saw you first he swore you were a countryman, and there was some difference of opinion.”
“And what, may I ask, did Kilbride side with?”
“Oh,” said he promptly, “I had never a doubt about that. I knew you were Scots, but what beat me was to say whether you were Hielan' or Lowlan'.” “And how, if it's a fair question, did you come to the conclusion that I was a countryman of any sort?” said I.
He laughed softly, and “Man,” said he, “I could never make any mistake about that, whatever of it. There's many a bird that's like the woodcock, but the woodcock will aye be kennin' which is which, as the other man said. Thae bones were never built on bread and wine. It's a French coat you have there, and a cockit hat (by your leave), but to my view you were as plainly from Scotland as if you had a blue bonnet on your head and a sprig of heather in your lapels. And here am I giving you the strange cow's welcome (as the other man said), and that is all inquiry and no information. You must just be excusing our bit foolish wadger, and if the proposal would come favourably from myself, that is of a notable family, though at present under a sort of cloud, as the other fellow said, I would be proud to have you share in the bottle of wine that was dependent upon Grant's impudent wadger. I can pass my word for my friends there that they are all gentry like ourselves—of the very best, in troth, though not over-nice in putting this task on myself.”
I would have liked brawly to spend an hour out any company than my own, but the indulgence was manifestly one involving the danger of discovery; it was, as I told myself, the greatest folly to be sitting in a tavern at all, so MacKellar's manner immediately grew cold when he saw a swithering in my countenance.
“Of course,” said he, reddening and rising, “of course, every gentleman has his own affairs, and I would be the last to make a song of it if you have any dubiety about my friends and me. I'll allow the thing looks very like a gambler's contrivance.”
“No, no, Mr. MacKellar,” said I hurriedly, unwilling to let us part like that, “I'm swithering here just because I'm like yoursel' of it and under a cloud of my own.”
“Dod! Is that so?” said he quite cheerfully again, and clapping down, “then I'm all the better pleased that the thing that made the roebuck swim the loch—and that's necessity—as the other man said, should have driven me over here to precognosce you. But when you say you are under a cloud, that is to make another way of it altogether, and I will not be asking you over, for there is a gentleman there among the five of us who might be making trouble of it.”
“Have you a brother in Glasgow College?” says I suddenly, putting a question that had been in my mind ever since he had mentioned his name.
“Indeed, and I have that,” said he quickly, “but now he is following the law in Edinburgh, where I am in the hopes it will be paying him better than ever it paid me that has lost two fine old castles and the best part of a parish by the same. You'll not be sitting there and telling me surely that you know my young brother Alasdair?”