“Aye, was he. And he gae’d oot wi’ the sodgers to deave they rebels frae Inchbrayock. They got the ship, ma leddy, but they didna get him. He escapit.”
“Did you say he was much hurt?” said Madam Flemington.
“Hoots! ye needna’ fash yersel’, ma leddy! A’ was feared for him i’ the nicht, but there wasna’ muckle wrang wi’ him when he gae’d awa’, or, dod, a’ wouldna’ hae left him!”
He had no mind to spoil his presentment of himself as Good Samaritan.
So far he had learnt nothing. He had spoken of the Prince’s men as rebels without a sign of displeasure showing on Madam Flemington’s face. Archie might be playing a double game and she might be doing the same, but there was nothing to suggest it. She was magnificently impersonal. She had not even shown the natural concern that he expected with regard to her own flesh and blood.
“Go now,” said she, waving her hand towards the back part of the house; “you shall feed well, you and your dogs; and when you have finished you can come to these steps again, and I will give you some money. You have done well by me.”
She re-entered the house and he drove away to the kitchen-door, dismissed.
If Wattie hoped to discover anything more there about the lady and her household, he was disappointed. The servants raised their chins in refined disapproval of the vagrant upon whom their mistress had seen fit to waste words under the very front windows of Ardguys. They resolved that he should find the back-door, socially, a different place, and only the awe in which they stood of Christian compelled them to obey her to the letter. A crust or two would have interpreted her wishes, had they dared to please themselves. But Madam Flemington knew every resource of her larder and kitchen, for French housekeeping and the frugality of her exiled years had taught her thrift. She would measure precisely what had been given to her egregious guest, down to the bones laid, by her order, before his dogs.
The beggar ate in silence, amid the brisk cracking made by five pairs of busy jaws; the maids were in the stronghold of the kitchen, far from the ungenteel sight of his coarse enjoyment. When he had satisfied himself, he put the fragments into his leathern bag and went round once more to the front of the house.
A window was open on the ground-floor, and Madam Flemington’s large white hand came over the sill holding a couple of crown pieces. She was sitting on the window-seat within. Her cloak and the calash had disappeared, and Wattie could see the fine poise of her head. She dropped the coin into the cart as he drove below.