“Why, what did you expect? Did you think we were ‘men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders?’”
“No, I did not expect that; but I expected to find everything different from what I had been accustomed to. Now, the company here are dressed just like a party in England, and behave in the same manner. Even the language is intelligible at times; though the laird, I must say, would require an interpreter.”
“Ah, the jolly old laird! His face is a sort of polyglot dictionary—it is the expression for good-humour, kindness, and hospitality, in all languages.”
“And who is that at his right hand?”
“What? the henchman? That’s Rory M‘Taggart—he was piper for twenty years in the 73d, and killed three men with his own hand at Vimiera.”
“And is that the reason he is called the henchman?”
“Yes; henchman means, ‘the piper with the bloody hand—the slaughterer of three.’”
“What a comprehensive word! It is almost equal to the laird’s face.”
But here the laird broke in upon their conversation.
“Miss Mowbray, dinna be frightened at a’ the daft things the wild sodger is saying to you.” Then he added, in a lower tone, “Chairlie wad settle down into a douce, quiet, steady, married man, for a’ his tantrums. It wad be a pity if a Frenchman’s gun should spoil his beauty, puir fallow!”