“Oh, then I will have heard the story wrong. It would be Donald who went back to Drummossie Moor after you when you were wounded?”
“Could a friend do less?”
“Or more?”
“He would have done as much for me. My plain duty!” I said, shrugging, anxious to be done with the subject.
She looked at me with sparkling eyes, laughing at my discomposure, in a half impatience of my stolid English phlegm.
“Oh, you men! You go to your death for a friend, and if by a miracle you escape: ‘Pooh! ’Twas nothing whatever. Gin it rain to-morrow, I think ’twill be foul,’ you say, and expect to turn it off so.”
I took the opening like a fox.
“Faith, I hope it will not rain to-morrow,” I said. “I have to keep watch outside. Does the sun never shine in Raasay, Aileen?”
“Whiles,” she answered, laughing. “And are all Englishmen so shy of their virtues?”
Tony Creagh coming up at that moment, she referred the question to him.