"His head will not turn so easy as yours, Louis, lad," Patsy retorted; "there is a deal more in it!"
Louis Raincy was not in any way put out. Of course Patsy was different. You never knew in the least what she was going to say, and it would have grieved him exceedingly not to be abused. He would have been sure, either that the girl was sickening for a serious illness, or that he had mortally offended her.
"How did you leave the Wise Uncle this morning?" he asked, with a nod of his head in the direction of the house by the Abbey Burnfoot. Both had begun to climb a little way up out of the path by the waterside. They did so without any words. It was the regular order of things, as they both knew. For in the valley bottom Uncle Julian or Adam Ferris might come round the corner upon them in a moment, and being young, they wanted to talk without restraint. Besides, there was a constant coming and going of messengers between the two houses. A carriage road led along the highway to the cliffs, and then bent sharply down steep zigzags to the stables of the Abbey, but all ordinary intercourse between the houses was conducted along the footpath by the Abbey Burn.
"Uncle Julian," said the girl, as if continuing some former conversation, "is quite different from father. He has seen the world and can tell tales of black savages and Arab chiefs and piracy in the China seas. But father has just lived in his own house of Cairn Ferris all his life. You know he called me Patricia after my mother—Patricia Wemyss Ferris. Oh, not even your grandfather is better known than my father. They made him a justice of the peace, too, but because he can do no good to the poor folk against the great landlords, he mostly stays at home. You know our house? From the outside—yes, of course. Well, when your grandfather will let you, you shall know it from the inside too. But not till then. Oh, it is big, roomy and quite comfortable, and though it would not hold an army like Castle Raincy, it is quite big enough to get lost in."
"Of course," said Raincy, vaguely feeling the necessity of defending himself and those who were his, "if it were not for grandfather and his wretched old feud, mother and I would come and see you to-morrow. She is—well, she would love you!"
"Would she, I doubt?" said Patsy, giving her bonnet a vicious jerk to bid it stay on her head; "mothers seldom like those whom their sons—"
"Adore!" put in Louis Raincy smilingly.
"Out, traitor!" cried the girl with a quick, scornful upthrow of the chin, "it is the smile that saves you, Louis, lad. Easy it is to see that you have had little experience of talking to women, when you come firing off words that ought to mean great things into the middle of a talk about smuggling cases and justices of the peace."
"But I do mean—" began Louis, preparing to take solemn oath.
"You mean nothing of the sort, and well it is for you, little boy. Quiet, now, and listen! I am a Pict—yes, I, Patsy Ferris! Uncle Julian says so. I am (so he tells me) a throwback to my grandmother's folk who were Fingauls—and her father the Laird of Kirkmaiden was the chief of them. That is why I do nothing, say nothing, think nothing like a scone-faced maid of the Scots. I am centuries older than they. If it ever arrives to me to fall in love with any man—it seems impossible, but Uncle Julian says it will come—it is I who will seek that man and make him love me, and if he ever leaves me or is untrue, I shall kill him. For that is the way of the Fingaul. Uncle Julian says so."