This sudden appeal causes Mary Avon to flush slightly; but she says demurely, looking down—
"Of course I don't know anything that he doesn't know."
"Hm!" says the Laird, who does not seem over pleased. "I have observed that young men who are too brilliant at the first, seldom come to much afterwards. Has he gained anything substantial? Has he a good practice? Does he keep his carriage yet?"
"No, no!" says our hostess, with a fine contempt for such things. "He has a higher ambition than that. His practice is almost nothing. He prefers to sacrifice that in the meantime. But his reputation—among the scientific—why—why, it is European!"
"Hm!" says the Laird. "I have sometimes seen that persons who gave themselves up to erudeetion, lost the character of human beings altogether. They become scientific machines. The world is just made up of books for them—and lectures—they would not give a halfpenny to a beggar for fear of poleetical economy——"
"Oh, how can you say such a thing of Angus Sutherland!" says she—though he has said no such thing of Angus Sutherland. "Why, here is this girl who goes to Edinburgh—all by herself—to nurse an old woman in her last illness; and as Angus Sutherland is in Edinburgh on some business—connected with the University, I believe—I ask him to call on her and see if he can give her any advice. What does he do? He stops in Edinburgh two months—editing that scientific magazine there instead of in London—and all because he has taken an interest in the old woman and thinks that Mary should not have the whole responsibility on her shoulders. Is that like a scientific machine?"
"No," says the Laird, with a certain calm grandeur; "you do not often find young men doing that for the sake of an old woman." But of course we don't know what he means.
"And I am so glad he is coming to us!" she says, with real delight in her face. "We shall take him away from his microscopes, and his societies, and all that. Oh, and he is such a delightful companion—so simple, and natural, and straightforward! Don't you think so, Mary?"
Mary Avon is understood to assent: she does not say much—she is so deeply interested in a couple of porpoises that appear from time to time on the smooth plain on the sea.
"I am sure a long holiday would do him a world of good," says this eager hostess; "but that is too much to expect. He is always too busy. I think he has got to go over to Italy soon, about some exhibition of surgical instruments, or something of that sort."