ou have few friends. Bah! what
are all your letters of introduction worth? What do they bring you in? A
few invitations to dinner, or to spend a week up country by a wealthy
_estanciero_, advice from this friend and the next friend, and from a
dozen friends maybe, but all different. You are already getting puzzled.
You don't know what to do for the best. You're stopping here to look about
you, as the saying is. You might well ask me what right have I to advise
you. The right of brotherhood, I may answer. By birth and station you may
be far above me, but--you are friends--you are from dear auld Scotland.
Boys, you are my brothers!'

'And I your sister!' Aunt extended her hand as she spoke, and the worthy
fellow 'coralled' it, so to speak, in his big brown fist, and tears sprang
to his eyes.

He pulled himself up sharp, however, and surrounded himself with smoke, as
the cuttle-fish does with black water, and probably for the same
reason--to escape observation.

'Now,' he said, 'this is no time for sentiment; it is no land for
sentiment, but for hard work. Well, what are you going to do? Simply to
say you're going to make your fortune is all fiddlesticks and folly. How
are you going to begin?'

'We were thinking--' I began, but paused.

'_I_ was thinking--' said my aunt; then she paused also.

Moncrieff laughed, but not unmannerly.

'I was thinking,' he said. '_You_ were thinking; _he_, _she_, or _it_ was
thinking. Well, my good people, you may stop all your life in Buenos Ayres
and conjugate the verb "to think"; but if you'll take my advice you will
put a shoulder to the wheel of life, and try to conjugate the verb "to
do".'

'We all want to _do_ and act,' said Donald, energetically.

'Right. Well, you see, you have one thing already in your favour. You have
a wee bit o' siller in your pouch. It is a nest egg, though; it is not to
be spent--it is there to bring more beside it. Now, will I tell you how I
got on in the world? I'm not rich, but I am in a fair way to be
independent. I am very fond of work, for work's sake, and I'm thirty years
of age. Been in this country now for over fourteen years. Had I had a nest
egg when I started, I'd have been half a millionaire by now. But, wae's
me! I left the old country with nothing belonging to me but my crook and
my plaid.'

'You were a shepherd before you came out, then?' said aunt.

'Yes; and that was the beauty of it. You've maybe heard o' Foudland, in
Aberdeensh