David [derisively].  Oho, has she got you, James?

James [feeling the sting of it].  Nobody has got me.

David.  They’ll catch you yet, lad.

James.  They’ll never catch me.  You’ve been nearer catched yourself.

Alick.  Yes, Kitty Menzies, David.

David [feeling himself under the umbrella].  It was a kind of a shave that.

Alick [who knows all that is to be known about women and can speak of them without a tremor].  It’s a curious thing, but a man cannot help winking when he hears that one of his friends has been catched.

David.  That’s so.

James [clinging to his manhood].  And fear of that wink is what has kept the two of us single men.  And yet what’s the glory of being single?

David.  There’s no particular glory in it, but it’s safe.

James [putting away his aspirations].  Yes, it’s lonely, but it’s safe.  But who did you mean the poetry for, then?

David.  For Maggie, of course.

[You don’t know David and James till you know how they love their sister Maggie.]

Alick.  I thought that.

David [coming to the second point of his statement about Love].  I saw her reading poetry and saying those words over to herself.

James.  She has such a poetical mind.

David.  Love.  There’s no doubt as that’s what Maggie has set her heart on.  And not merely love, but one of those grand noble loves; for though Maggie is undersized she has a passion for romance.

James [wandering miserably about the room].  It’s terrible not to be able to give Maggie what her heart is set on.

[The others never pay much attention to James, though he is quite a smart figure in less important houses.]

Alick [violently].  Those idiots of men.

David.  Father, did you tell her who had got the minister of
Galashiels?

Alick [wagging his head sadly].  I had to tell her.  And then I—­I—­ bought her a sealskin muff, and I just slipped it into her hands and came away.

James [illustrating the sense of justice in the Wylie family].  Of course, to be fair to the man, he never pretended he wanted her.

David.  None of them wants her; that’s what depresses her.  I was thinking, father, I would buy her that gold watch and chain in Snibby’s window.  She hankers after it.

James [slapping his pocket].  You’re too late, David; I’ve got them for her.

David.  It’s ill done of the minister.  Many a pound of steak has that man had in this house.

Alick.  You mind the slippers she worked for him?

James.  I mind them fine; she began them for William Cathro.  She’s getting on in years, too, though she looks so young.