"Because I asked him," said Mary, drawing herself up. "And I will ask him again, when it suits me."
Mr. Purdie said nothing. His heavily down-drawn mouth was more than usually dogged in expression; and it was with difficulty Mary extracted from him the information that the punishment the sheriff would most likely inflict on Macdonald was a fine of forty shillings, with the alternative of three weeks' imprisonment.
"I will pay the fine," said she, promptly. "I did not authorise you to have that man turned out of his croft; and I won't have anyone turned out until I have a thorough investigation made, and the rents revised, and the arrears cancelled."
But when she proceeded to place before him the comprehensive project she had formed—to carry out which he had been summoned from Inverness—the factor abandoned his obstinate attitude, and became almost plaintive.
"Ye'll ruin the estate, Miss Stanley; and ye'll not make these people one whit more contented. Have I not had experience of them, years and years before you ever came to the place? And now that the Land League is their god, nothing will satisfy them but getting crofts and farms, arable land and pasture, all rent free, and the landlords taking the first train for the South. The poor, deluded craytures—if it was not for their spite and ill-will—one could almost peety them; for what would be the advantage to them of a lot of useless land, with no stock to put on it? But maybe they expect to have the stock bought and given to them as well?—I would not wonder! There's they scoundrels in the newspapers, that do not know the difference between a barn-door and a peat-stack, they've filled the heads o' the ignorant craytures with all kinds of nonsense, and they would have the deer-forests divided up—the deer-forests!—they might as well try to plough, sow, and reap the Atlantic—"
"All that does not concern me," she said, interrupting him without scruple. "What does concern me is to have myself put right, in the first place. That is to say, I wish to have rents fixed that the people can pay without getting into arrears—just rents, so that they can have no right to complain."
"Ay, and ye'll go on remitting this and remitting that," said the factor; "and if ye remitted everything they would still grumble! I tell ye, Miss Stanley, I've had experience; and it's not the way to treat these people. The more ye give them, the more they'll ask. What you consider justice, they will consider weakness; they will expect more and more; and complain if they do not get it. I'm telling ye the truth, Miss Stanley, about these idle, and ill-willed, and ill-thrawn craytures: what you propose is no the way to deal wi' them at all——"
"But I propose to take that way none the less," said Mary. And Käthchen, sitting there, and listening, and regarding the Troich Bheag Dhearg, said to herself: 'My good friend, you have tremendous shoulders, and a powerful mouth, and suspicious and vindictive eyes; but you don't in the least know with whom you have to do. Your obstinacy won't answer; and if you are discreet, you will allow it to subside.'
"I have done my best for the estate," he said, with some stiffness.
"Yes," said Mary, "no doubt. But then the result that has been arrived at is not quite satisfactory—according to modern notions. Perhaps the old way was the best; but I am going to try the new—and I suppose I can do what I like with my own, as the saying is. And so, Mr. Purdie, I wish you to go out to-morrow morning and call on Mr. Watson, and give him my compliments—oh, no," she said, interrupting herself: "on second thoughts I will drive out to Craiglarig myself—for it is a great favour I have to ask. Will you dine with us this evening, Mr. Purdie?"