"Yes, thank goodness!"
Max stared.
"But you can"t get a cab."
"Oh yes, you can--in Edinburgh and Glasgow."
"Then you keep a carriage?"
"Yes; you came in it--the boat," said Kenneth, laughing. "We used to have a large yacht, but father gave it up last year. He said he couldn"t afford it now on account of the confounded lawyers."
Max winced a little, and then said, with quiet dignity,--
"My father is a lawyer."
"Is he? Beg pardon, then. But your father isn"t one of the confounded lawyers, or else you wouldn"t be here."
Kenneth laughed, and Max seemed more thoughtful.
"S"pose you think we"re rather rough down here; but this is the Highlands. You"ll soon get used to us. There"s no carriage, but we can give you a mount on a capital pony. Walter Scott would do for you."
"Is Walter Scott alive? I"ve read all his stories."
"No, no; I mean our s.h.a.ggy pony. He"s half Scotch, half Shetland, and the rummest little beggar you ever saw. He can climb and slide, and jump like a gra.s.shopper. All you"ve got to do is to stick your knees into him and hold on by the mane when he"s going up so steep a place that you begin to slip over his tail, and you"re all right, only you have to kick at his nose when he tries to bite."
Max looked aghast.
"Can you fish?"
"No."
"But you brought a lot of rods."
"Oh yes. Father said I was to learn to fish and shoot while I was down here, as some day I should be a Highland landlord."
"We can teach you all that sort of thing."
"Can you fish and shoot?"
"Can I? I say, are you chaffing me?"
"No; I mean it."
"Well, just a little. Let"s see, I"m seventeen nearly, and I was only six when my father made me fire off a gun first. I"ve got a little one in the gun-room that I used to use."
"And were you very young when you began to learn to fish?"
"I caught a little salmon when I was eight. Father said the fish nearly drowned me instead of me drowning the salmon. But I caught him all the same."
"How was that?"
"Oh, I tumbled in, I suppose, and rolled over in the stream. Shon pulled me out."
"Did he?"
"Yes; Scood"s father. He"s one of our gillies. Lives down there."
"By that pig-sty?"
"Pig-sty? That isn"t a pig-sty. That"s a bothy."
"Oh!" said Max, as he stared at a rough, whitewashed hovel, thatched, and covered with hazel rods tied down to keep the thatch from blowing off.
"There won"t be time to-night after dinner, but I"ll take you down to Shon to-morrow. We always call him Long Shon because he"s so little, and we pretend he"s so fond of whisky. Scood"s a head taller than his father."
"It will be all most interesting, I"m sure," said Max, whose feet felt very wet and uncomfortable.
"I"ll take you to see Tavish too," continued Kenneth, with a half-laugh at his companion"s didactic form of speech. "Tavish is our forester."
"Forester?"
"Yes; and then I must introduce you to Donald Dhu."
"Is he a Scottish chief?"
"Well," said Kenneth, with a half laugh, "I daresay he thinks so. Like pipes?"
"Pipes? No, I never tried them. I once had a cigarette, but I didn"t like it."
"Oh, I say, you are comic!" said Kenneth, laughing heartily, and then restraining himself. "I meant the bagpipes. Donald is our piper."
"Your piper! How--"
Max was going to say horrible, as he recalled one of his pet abominations, a dirty, kilted and plaided Scotchman, who made night hideous about the Bloomsbury squares with his chanter and drone.
But he restrained himself, and, as Kenneth led the way here and there about the little rocky knoll, he kept on talking.
"Donald has a place up in one of the towers--that one at the far corner.
He took to it to play in. He composes dirges and things up there."
"But do you like having a piper?"
"Like it? I don"t know. He has always been here. He belongs to us.
There always was a piper to the Clan Mackhai. There, you can see right up the loch here, and that"s where our salmon river empties itself over those falls. See that hill?"
"Yes."
"That"s Ben Doy. You"ll like to climb up that. It isn"t one of the highest, but it"s four thousand, and jolly steep. There"s a loch right up in it full of little trout."