“Sympathetic intuition, I suppose. But why do you object to Scotsmen? I thought you were Scotch yourself.”
“Mr Benson, if you ever dare to say such a thing again, we shall quarrel. Because you were born in South Africa are you a Hottentot? I happened to be born in Scotland, but you can hardly blame me for a thing that happened when I was so very young; I was only a year old when I came away. No, I am a Cape Colonist; I have breathed Cape air and eaten Cape food ever since I was a baby. In fact, I’m just Cape from head to foot.”
“I’m very glad to be able to sympathise with you, for I happen to be very fond of the Cape myself, but just now will you satisfy a perhaps impertinent curiosity by telling me why you object so much to Scotch people?”
“You will know, without being told, before you have been here many months. One does not object to leg of mutton, or even pumpkin on the table now and then. But suppose you were to be fed, say, on pumpkin for breakfast, dinner and supper, including entrées and dessert, every day for several years, you’d long for a change of diet, would you not?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Scotch people are very good indeed, ‘unco’ guid’ in fact—and no one would dispute the fact did they not carry inscriptions of their virtues printed all over them in large letters. And then—the way they run down everything South African. What puzzles me is, why they ever left their own superior country. I’m sure we could manage our own affairs well enough without them.”
“Well, for my part,” replied Benson, “I have liked most of the Scotch people I have met. I must, at the same time, own it to be evident that when the individual prayed ‘Lord, gi’e us a guid conceit o’ oorsels,’ not alone must the prayer have been literally granted, but it must have been put up on behalf of the whole nation.”
On the way homeward Benson tried to draw Mr Mactavish into conversation, but without success. Allister was unwontedly silent. He had, as he said, been “takin’ notes.”
As a matter of fact, the boarding-master was not at all pleased at the evident pleasure Jeanie had shown in Benson’s society. Mr Mactavish was badly in love; he scented untoward complications. For a long time he had been hovering on the brink of a proposal, and, although Jeanie had never given him the least encouragement, his “guid conceit” made him as sanguine of acceptance as ever was the Laird o’ Cockpen.
Mr Mactavish was the senior member of the Institution staff—so far as length of service went. He had seen Principals come and Principals go, but since the birth of the Institution there had been but one boarding-master, and his name was Mactavish. Consequently, he had come to regard the fortunes of the establishment as being bound up with his own personality. As a matter of fact none of the various Principals had ever properly asserted himself; each had tacitly acquiesced in the dour boarding-master’s assumption that he was the pivot upon which the whole organisation revolved.