He covered his mouth with his hand, but decided to give his son away.  All his life he had been rejecting the claims of beauty and gentle things, and he could be sure that his well-brought-up family would go on doing it after he was in his grave.  Over this one little point, which did not really matter, he could afford to be handsome.  “Aye, ’twas Mr. Philip that saw you,” he owned easily, and swerved his head before the long look, pansy-soft with gratitude, that she now turned on him.  The girl was so inveterately inclined to dilate on the pleasant things of life that his generosity in admitting that his son was a liar, and thus assuring her that her shame had not been as public as she had supposed, quite wiped out all her other emotions.  She fairly glowed about it; and at that the old man felt curiously ashamed, as if he had gained a child’s prattling thanks by giving it a bad sixpence, although he could not see what he had done that was not all right.  He rubbed his hands and tried to kindle a jollity by crying, “Well, what would I do but tell you?  If I hadn’t, ye’d have been running about distributing black eyes among my clients just on suspicion, ye fierce wee randy!”

“Och, you make fun of me—!” She smiled, palely, and gnawed the ginger stick, her jaw being so impeded by her desire to cry that she could not bite it.

“Poor bairn!  Poor bairn!” he sighed, and his pity for the little thing seemed to him so moving, so completely in the vein of the best Scottish pathos, that he continued to gaze at her and enjoy his own emotion, until a wryness of her mouth made him fear that unless he hurried up and got to the point she would rush from the room and leave him without this delicious occupation.  So he went on, speaking cosily.  “I thought little of it.  You are a good lassie, Nelly, and I can trust you.  I know that fine.  Sometimes I think it is a great peety that Philip was not born a wee girl, for he would have grown up into a fine maiden aunt.  He is that particular about his sisters you would not believe.  Though losh! he has no call for anxiety, for they’re none of them bonny.”

Ellen was pulling herself together, trying to take his lack of censure as a matter of course and choking back the tears of relief.  “I’d not say that,” she said in a strangled voice.  “Miss Chrissie isn’t so bad, though with those teeth I think she would be wiser to avoid looking arch.  Och, Mr. James, what’s come to you?” For he was rolling with a great groundswell of merriment, and slapping his thigh and chuckling.  “The things the simplest woman can say!  No need for practice in boodwars and draring-rooms!  It comes natural!” She looked at him with wrinkled brows and smiling mouth, sure that he was not being unkind, but wondering why he laughed, and murmured, “Mr. James, Mr. James!” It flashed on her suddenly what he meant, and she jumped up from her seat and cried through exasperated laughter, “Och, men are mean things!  I see what’s in your mind!