"What makes ye smile?" asked my tattered companion. "Do ye no' like the taste o' it?"
"Oh! the rabbit is all right," I said, "but I was just thinking that had it lived its children might have belonged to a brother of mine some day."
"How's that? Is he a keeper? Od sake!" he went on, scratching his head, as it seemed to dawn on him, "ye don't happen to belong to the big hoose up there?"
"I live there," said I.
He leaned over to me quickly. "Have another leg, man,—have it;—dod! it's your ain, anyway."
"I haven't finished the first yet. Go ahead yourself."
He ate slowly, eying me now and again through the smoke.
"So you're a second son, eh?" he pondered. "Man, ye have my sympathy. I had the same ill-luck. That's how my brother Angus got the pipes and I'm a tinker. Although, I wouldna mind being the second son o' a Laird or a Duke."
"Well, my friend," said I; "that's just where our opinions differ. Now, I'd sooner be the second son of a rag-and-bone man; a—Perthshire piper of the name of Robertson; ay! of the devil himself,—than the second son of an Earl."
"Do ye tell me that now!" he put in, with a cock of his towsled head, picking up another piece of rabbit.