"Oh, yes!" she says, rather gloomily; "they seem to be very good friends."
"Yachting is a famous thing for making people acquainted," says the Laird, with increasing delight. "They know one another now as well as though they had been friends for years on the land. Has that struck ye now before?"
"Oh, yes!" she says. There is no delight on her face.
"It will jist be the happiness of my old age, if the Lord spares me, to see these two established at Denny-mains," says he, as if he were looking at the picture before his very eyes. "And we have a fine soft air in the west of Scotland; it's no like asking a young English leddy to live in the bleaker parts of the north, or among the east winds of Edinburgh. And I would not have the children sent to any public school, to learn vulgar ways of speech and clipping of words. No, no; I would wale out a young man from our Glasgow University—one familiar with the proper tradeetions of the English language; and he will guard against the clipping fashion of the South, just as against the yaumering of the Edinburgh bodies. Ah will wale him out maself. But no too much education: no, no; that is the worst gift ye can bestow upon bairns. A sound constitution; that is first and foremost. I would rather see a lad out and about shooting rabbits than shut up wi' a pale face among a lot of books. And the boys will have their play, I can assure ye; I will send that fellow Andrew about his business if he doesna stop netting and snaring. What do I care about the snipping at the shrubs? I will put out turnips on the verra lawn, jist to see the rabbits run about in the morning. The boys shall have their play at Denny-mains, I can assure ye; more play than school-hours, or I'm mistaken!"
The Laird laughed to himself just as if he had been telling a good one about Homesh.
"And no muzzle-loaders," he continued, with a sudden seriousness. "Not a muzzle-loader will I have put into their hands. Many's the time it makes me grue to think of my loading a muzzle-loader when I was a boy—loading one barrel, with the other barrel on full-cock, and jist gaping to blow my fingers off. I'm thinking Miss Mary—though she'll no be Miss Mary then—will be sore put to when the boys bring in thrushes and blackbirds they have shot; for she's a sensitive bit thing; but what I say is, better let them shoot thrushes and blackbirds than bring them up to have white faces ower books. Ah tell ye this: I'll give them a sovereign a-piece for every blackbird they shoot on the wing!"
The Laird had got quite excited; he did not notice that Municipal London was dangerously near the edge of the table.
"Andrew will not objeck to the shooting o' blackbirds," he said, with a loud laugh—as if there was something of Homesh's vein in that gardener. "The poor crayture is just daft about his cherries. That's another thing; no interference with bairns in a garden. Let them steal what they like. Green apples? bless ye, they're the life o' children! Nature puts everything to rights. She kens better than books. If I catched the schoolmaster lockin' up they boys in their play-hours, my word but I'd send him fleein'!"
He was most indignant with this school-master, although he was to be of his own "waling." He was determined that the lads should have their play, lessons or no lessons. Green apples he preferred to Greek. The dominie would have to look out.
"Do you think, ma'am," he says, in an insidious manner; "do ye think she would like to have a furnished house in London for pairt of the year? She might have her friends to see——"