'God bless me,' Mr. Hodson was driven to exclaim at last, 'what is a man of your ability doing in a place like this? Why don't you go away to one of the big cities—or over to America—where a young fellow with his wits about him can push himself forward?'
'I would rather be "where the dun deer lie,"' said he, with a kind of bashful laugh.
'You read Kingsley?' the other said, still more astonished.
'My brother lends me his books from time to time,' Ronald said modestly. 'He's a Free Church minister in Glasgow.'
'A Free Church minister? He went through college, then?'
'Yes, sir; he took his degree at Aberdeen.'
'But—but—' said the newcomer, who had come upon a state of affairs he could not understand at all—'who was your father, then? He sent your brother to college, I presume?'
'Oh no, sir. My father is a small farmer down the Lammermuir way; and he just gave my brother Andrew his wages like the rest, and Andrew saved up for the classes.'
'You are not a Highlander, then?'
'But half-and-half, like my name, sir,' he said (and all the shyness was gone now: he spoke to this stranger frankly and simply as he would have spoken to a shepherd on the hillside). 'My mother was Highland. She was a Macdonald; and so she would have me called Ronald; it's a common name wi' them.'