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"She stole my kids!" "They are orphans, Saint John, and I was going to adopt them like my grandfather did Grandpa Campbell." "They ain't either orphans!" shouted the other. "They said their mother was dead and they had no home." "Mamma goned away and locked up the house," volunteered Lewie from the parsonage porch where he had taken refuge with his twin sister at the first sign of the fray.
"What can he know about such things? A wandering dilettante, the worst type of the pseudo-culture of our universities. He must see all things through the spectacles of his upbringing." Fortunately he spoke in a low voice, but Lord Manorwater caught the name. "You are talking about Lewie," he said; and then to the table at large, "do you know that Lewie is home? I saw him to-day."
"It's all right," said the driver, as the dogcart swung neatly round an ugly turn. "There's the mist going off the top of Etterick Law, and why, that's the end of the Dreichill?" "It's the Dreichill, and beyond it is the Little Muneraw. Are you glad to be home, Lewie?" "Rather," said the young man gravely. "This is my own countryside, and I fancy it's the last place a man forgets."
She had met or heard of this man before. The valley was divided between Glenavelin and Etterick. He was not the Doctor, and he was not the minister. Might not he be that Lewie, the well-beloved, whose praises she had heard consistently sung since her arrival? It pleased her to think that she had been the first to meet the redoubtable young man.
The bills of the evening papers were plastered in a row on the pavement, and the glaring pink and green still further increased the dazzle. After the cool darkness within each shaded his eyes and blinked. "This settles it," said George. "I shall wire to Lewie to-night." "And I," said the other; "and to-morrow evening we'll be in that cool green Paradise of a glen. Think of it!
"You have had the wrong kind of education, Lewie. You have always been the spoiled child, and easily and half-unconsciously you have mastered things which the self-made man has to struggle towards with a painful conscious effort.
Haystounslacks was driving from Gledsmuir, and unless the Lord protects him he will be in Avelin water ere he gets home. Whisky and a Glenavelin road never agree, Lewie, as I who have mended the fool's head a dozen times should know. But I thought you would never come, and was prepared to ride in the next baker's van."
Some day I will go out and do the same thing again with no advantages, and if I come back you may praise me then." "Right, Lewie. A bare game and no chances is the rule of war. And now, what will you do?" "Settle down," said the young man with mock pathos, "which in my case means settling up also. I suppose it is what you would call the crucial moment in my life.
"It's simply hideous the way one is forgotten. It's all right for the busy people, for they shift their sets with their fortune, but for drones like me it's the saddest thing in life. Before we came away, Lewie, I went up for a day to Oxford to see about some things, and stopped a night there.
You people who have been coddled and petted must learn it, too; and for you it is harder to learn, but pleasanter in the learning, because you stand above the bare need of things, and have leisure for the adornments. We must all be fighters and strugglers, Lewie, and it is better to wear out than to rust out.
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