“There you are, Father Hamilton!” said she. “You'll come little speed with a man from the Mearns moors unless you take him a little more seriously.”
Father Hamilton pursed his lips and rubbed down his thighs, an image of the gross man that would have turned my father's stomach, who always liked his men lean, clean, and active. He was bantering me, this fat priest of Dixmunde, but all the time it was with a friendly eye. Thinks I, here's another legacy of goodwill from my extraordinary uncle!
“Hast got thy pass yet, Master Dull?” said he.
“Not so dull, Master Minister, but what I resent the wrong word even in a joke,” I replied, rising to go.
Thurot's voice was on the stair now, and Clan-carty's. If they were not to find their protégé in an undignified war of words with the priest of Dixmunde, it was time I was taking my feet from there, as the saying went.
But Miss Walkinshaw would not hear of it. “No, no,” she protested, “we have some business before you go to your ridiculous French—weary be on the language that ever I heard Je t'aime in it!—and how does the same march with you, Mr. Greig?”
“I know enough of it to thank my good friends in,” said I, “but that must be for another occasion.”
“Father Hamilton,” said she, “here's your secretary.”
A curious flash came to those eyes pitted in rolls of flabby flesh, I thought of an eagle old and moulting, languid upon a mountain cliff in misty weather, catching the first glimpse of sun and turned thereby to ancient memories. He said nothing; there was at the moment no opportunity, for the visitors had entered, noisily polite and posturing as was their manner, somewhat touched by wine, I fancied, and for that reason scarcely welcomed by the mistress of the house.
There could be no more eloquent evidence of my innocence in these days than was in the fact that I never wondered at the footing upon which these noisy men of the world were with a countrywoman of mine. The cause they often spoke of covered many mysteries; between the Rue de Paris and the Rue de la Boucherie I could have picked out a score of Scots in exile for their political faiths, and why should not Miss Walkinshaw be one of the company? But sometimes there was just the faintest hint of over-much freedom in their manner to her, and that I liked as little as she seemed to do, for when her face flushed and her mouth firmed, and she became studiously deaf, I felt ashamed of my sex, and could have retorted had not prudence dictated silence as the wisest policy.