"Did you ever see the like of that?" the Youth exclaimed, mortified beyond endurance. "Did you ever? As big as a cow! And as sure as you get such a chance, it is Sunday!"
"I am very glad," says Miss Avon. "I hope no one will shoot a seal on my account."
"The seal ought to be proud to have such a fate," said the Laird, gallantly. "Ye are saving him from a miserable and lingering death of cold, or hunger, or old age. And whereas in that case nobody would care anything or see anything more about him, ye give him a sort of immortality in your dining-room, and ye are never done admiring him. A proud fellow he ought to be. And if the seals about here are no very fine in their skins, still it would be a curiosity, and at present we have not one at all at Denny-mains."
Again this reference to Denny-mains: Angus Sutherland glanced from one to the other; but what could he see in the dusk?
Then we got back to the yacht: what a huge grey ghost she looked in the gloom! And as we were all waiting to get down the companion, Angus Sutherland put his hand on his hostess's arm, and stayed her.
"You must be wrong," said he, simply. "I have offended her somehow. She has not spoken ten words to me to-day."
CHAPTER XV.
HIDDEN SPRINGS.
"Well, perhaps it is better, after all," says a certain person, during one of those opportunities for brief conjugal confidences that are somewhat rare on board ship. She sighs as she speaks. "I thought it was going to be otherwise. But it will be all the better for Angus not to marry for some years to come. He has a great future before him; and a wife would really be an encumbrance. Young professional men should never marry; their circumstances keep on improving, but they can't improve their wives."
All this is very clear and sensible. It is not always that this person talks in so matter-of-fact a way. If, however, everything has turned out for the best, why this sudden asperity with which she adds—