The spy obeyed, though there were several things for which he would have wished to stipulate. But Stair had a newly primed pistol pointed midway between his ears as viewed from behind, and the spy felt keenly the one-sidedness of any discussion in such a situation. He marched down the hill, guided now to right and anon to left by a growled order from Stair. Whitefoot was in front, looking over his shoulder and occasionally showing his teeth. In this order the three arrived at the hollow where they had left Adam and Julian. The pair were still in earnest debate, so the little procession swerved away to the right to leave them to themselves.
"Evidently," thought Stair, "Patsy's father has been harder to convince than I had supposed. I'll wager it is the journey to London which sticks in his gizzard."
In this somewhat inelegant form, Stair expressed what was the truth.
"I do not see," said Adam Ferris, obstinately, "what particle of good I could do if I were to take up my residence in London for the rest of my life. I let Patsy go there because you thought it necessary, but I shall be still more glad to have her home again. She can marry a Prince if she likes or she can marry the Prince's gentleman. She will neither marry nor refrain from marrying because of anything you or I can say. I know Patsy better than you do, Julian. She comes from your side of the house, and the fact is she is far too like yourself ever to ask or take advice."
"But think how necessary your presence will be," Julian insisted, "it is not fair to leave a girl alone at what may prove to be the crisis of her fate."
"Well, it was none of my doing, Julian," said the Laird of Cairn Ferris, "I should not have sent her to a princess for the perfecting of her education. But you insisted upon it. Well, I trust my daughter. I have trusted her in greater dangers than any which can arrive through this Austrian young man. Never fear, Patsy will clear her own feet. The Princess shall have an answer to her letter, and the wooer as well, but I would not go to London to push the matter, no, not if she were to be an empress!"
And from this position Adam Ferris, with characteristic doggedness, was in no wise to be moved.
"You put me in a very awkward position," said Julian, discontentedly, "I cannot go myself, and even if I did, it would not be the same thing as the protection and approval of her father—"
A light broke upon Adam, and he smiled grimly.
"I think I remember your telling me, Julian, that in asking for a maid's hand in these countries, it was the correct etiquette for the nearest relatives of the bridegroom to come in state to the home of the parents of the bride, to ask for their daughter's hand. Now at Cairn Ferris I shall be glad to receive and to entertain to the best of my ability any of this Prince Eitel's family, or the Prince himself if he likes to make the journey. But you yourself have made me a strict believer in etiquette in such matters, and from Cairn Ferris I shall not stir!"