“Eh, lassie!  I could most greet wi’ joy to see the bonnie bit things; when I can get time I’se e’en go wi’ thee to Edinburgh; I’d like weel to see such fields an’ gardens an’ trees as I hear thee tell on.”

Then Margaret began again to describe the greenhouses, the meadows and wheat fields, the forests of oaks and beeches she had seen during her school days in Edinburgh.  Peter listened to her as if she was telling a wonderful fairy story, but he liked it, and, as he cut slice after slice from his smoked goose, he enjoyed her talk of roses and apple-blossoms, and smacked his lips for the thousandth time when she described a peach, and said, “It tasted, father, as if it had been grown in the Garden of Eden.”

After such conversations Peter was always stern and strict.  He felt an actual anger at Adam and Eve; their transgression became a keenly personal affair, for he had a very vivid sense of the loss they had entailed upon him.  The vague sense of wrong made him try to fix it, and, after a short reflection, he said in an injured tone: 

“I wonder when Ronald’s coming hame again?”

“Ronald is all right, father.”

“A’ wrong, thou means, lassie.  There’s three vessels waiting to be loaded, an’ the books sae far ahint that I kenna whether I’m losing or saving.  Where is he?”

“Not far away.  He will be at the Stones of Stennis this week some time with an Englishman he fell in with at Perth.”

“I wonder, now, was it for my sins or his ain that the lad has sic auld world notions?  There isna a pagan altar-stane ‘tween John O’Groat’s an’ Lambaness he doesna run after.  I wish he were as anxious to serve in the Lord’s temple—­I would build him a kirk an’ a manse for it.”

“We’ll be proud of Ronald yet, father.  The Sinclairs have been fighting and making money for centuries:  it is a sign of grace to have a scholar and a poet at last among them.”

Peter grumbled.  His ideas of poetry were limited by the Scotch psalms, and, as for scholarship, he asserted that the books were better kept when he used his own method of tallies and crosses.  Then he remembered Geordie Twatt’s misfortune, and had his little grumble out on this subject:  “Boat and goods might hae been a total loss, no to speak o’ the lives o’ Geordie an’ the four lads wi’ him; an’ a’ for the sake o’ liquor!”

Margaret looked at the brandy bottle standing at her father’s elbow, and, though she did not speak, the look annoyed Peter.

“You arna to even my glass wi’ his, lassie.  I ken when to stop—­Geordie never does.”

“It is a common fault in more things than drinking, father.  When Magnus Hay has struck the first blow he is quite ready to draw his dirk and strike the last one; and Paul Snackole, though he has made gold and to spare, will just go on making gold until death takes the balances out of his hands.  There are few folks that in all things offend not.”