For indeed the matter was a mystery to me, as well it might be. Wat Gordon of Lochinvar, sometime favourite of her Grace the Duchess of Wellwood, now gardener to a latitudinarian and cavalier Galloway laird, that had been a ferlie even on a day of miracles.
Wat continued to smile and smile.
"Well, I will tell you," he said. Yet for a while did not, but only walked on smiling.
At last he pursed his mouth and began to whistle. It was a bar or two of the air "Kate Kennedy is my darling."
Now at that time I own that I was not bright in the uptake about such things. For I had not till lately concerned me much with love and women's favours, but it came across me all in an instant.
"Oh!" I said.
"Ah!" said Wat.
And we looked at one another and nodded—Wat defiantly.
"Kate of the black eyebrows!" I said musingly. "They are joined over her brow," I went on, "and her ear comes straight down to her neck without any rounded lobe. They are two well-considered signs!"
Wat Gordon stopped suddenly, and cried out at me.