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And then a lad in a boat gave me a clout on the head that knocked the daftness out of me, and in a week I was marching on my own deck, with my bonnet cocked like a king's captain. I've been set by my unfriends on a rock in the Florida Keys, with a keg of dirty water and a bunch of figs, and the sun like to melt my brains, and two bullet holes in my thigh.
He was willing to talk, and told me many things: of good years in wine, of the nature of their trade, of the influence of the moon on brewing, of the importance of spigots, and what not; but when I tried to get out of him whether the owner were an eccentric private gentleman or a merchant that had the sense to earn little pennies as well as large ones, I could not make him understand my meaning; for his idea of rank was utterly different from mine and took no account of idleness and luxury and daftness, but was based entirely upon money and clothes.
But each had a daftness in the eye and something weak and unwholesome in the visage, so that they were an offence to the fresh, gusty moorland. All but Muckle John himself. He came out of his tent and prayed till the hill-sides echoed. It was a tangle of bedlamite ravings, with long screeds from the Scriptures intermixed like currants in a bag-pudding.
When the post returned, the conversation was back at Mr. Dishart. "Yes, lathies," Haggart was saying, "daftness about women comes to all, gentle and simple, common and colleged, humourists and no humourists. You say Mr. Dishart has preached ower muckle at women to stoop to marriage, but that makes no differ. Mony a humorous thing hae I said about women, and yet Chirsty has me.
I asked a man afterwards why nobody kicked him, and was told that Englishmen reverenced the weaker sex. Anyhow there he was now, nattily dressed, in a fine new car, obviously on his way to visit some of his smart friends. A sudden daftness took me, and in a second I had jumped into the tonneau and had him by the shoulder. 'Hullo, Jopley, I sang out. 'Well met, my lad! He got a horrid fright.
The other way will wreck public credit. That's what I say. Supposin' some Labour Government takes the notion that soap's bad for the nation? Are they goin' to shut up Port Sunlight? Or good clothes? Or lum hats? There's no end to their daftness if they once start on that track. A lawfu' trade's a lawfu' trade, says I, and it's contrary to public policy to pit it at the mercy of wheen cranks.
At Dron Point you spun your pickle o' tow, and you nursed the sick folk. There is mair spinning here, and mair sick folk. You are nae waur off, but better. And it is little o' the siller I hae given you that has been spent. A' expenses hae come oot o' my pocket." "I'll no hear tell o'you going awa'! Sich daftness.
Still there's a decency in daftness. And there's no decency in young Gourlay. He's just a mouth! 'Start canny, and you'll steer weel, my mother used to say; but he has started unco ill, and he'll steer to ruin." "Dinna spae ill-fortune!" said the baker, "dinna spae ill-fortune! And never despise a youngster for a random start. It's the blood makes a breenge."
Lizzie's daftness was not a serious matter; it consisted partly in a certain dreaminess, which brought a yonderly look into her eyes, and made her inattentive to what was going on around her, and partly in that habit of talking to herself which has already been referred to.
The old man shivered a little, and sanity came back into his eyes as they met the icy blue of Brian's. "What daftness is upon you, man?" "I know not, master," whimpered old Turlough feebly. "Do as you will."
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