“There are whiles that I am of the same mind,” said I.
“The strange thing is that ye seem to have a kind of a fancy for her too!” said Alan.
“The biggest kind, Alan,” said I, “and I think I’ll take it to my grave with me.”
“Well, ye beat me, whatever!” he would conclude.
I showed him the letter with Catriona’s postscript. “And here again!” he cried. “Impossible to deny a kind of decency to this Catriona, and sense forbye! As for James More, the man’s as boss as a drum; he’s just a wame and a wheen words; though I’ll can never deny that he fought reasonably well at Gladsmuir, and it’s true what he says here about the five wounds. But the loss of him is that the man’s boss.”
“Ye see, Alan,” said I, “it goes against the grain with me to leave the maid in such poor hands.”
“Ye couldna weel find poorer,” he admitted. “But what are ye to do with it? It’s this way about a man and a woman, ye see, Davie: the weemen-folk have got no kind of reason to them. Either they like the man, and then a’ goes fine; or else they just detest him, and ye may spare your breath—ye can do naething. There’s just the two sets of them—them that would sell their coats for ye, and them that never look the road ye’re on. That’s a’ that there is to women; and you seem to be such a gomeril that ye canna tell the tane frae the tither.”
“Well, and I’m afraid that’s true for me,” said I.
“And yet there’s naething easier!” cried Alan. “I could easy learn ye the science of the thing; but ye seem to me to be born blind, and there’s where the deefficulty comes in!”
“And can you no’ help me?” I asked, “you that’s so clever at the trade?”