ght; and it was plain enough,
even to my homespun wits, that she was bent to hammer up a match between
her cousin and a beardless boy that was something of a laird in Lothian.

"Saxpence had better take his broth with us, Catrine," says she. "Run
and tell the lasses."

And for the little while we were alone she was at a good deal of pains
to flatter me; always cleverly, always with the appearance of a banter,
still calling me Saxpence, but with such a turn that should rather
uplift me in my own opinion. When Catriona returned, the design became
if possible more obvious; and she showed off the girl's advantages like
a horse-couper with a horse. My face flamed that she should think me so
obtuse. Now I would fancy the girl was being innocently made a show of,
and then I could have beaten the old carline wife with a cudgel; and
now, that perhaps these two had set their heads together to entrap me,
and at that I sat and gloomed betwixt them like the very image of
ill-will. At last the match-maker had a better device, which was to
leave the pair of us alone. When my suspicions are anyway roused it is
sometimes a little the wrong side of easy to allay them. But though I
knew what breed she was of, and that was a breed of thieves, I could
never look in Catriona's face and disbelieve her.

"I must not ask?" says she eagerly, the same moment we were left alone.

"Ah, but to-day I can talk with a free conscience," I replied. "I am
lightened of my pledge, and indeed (after what has come and gone since
morning) I would not have renewed it were it asked."

"Tell me," she said. "My cousin will not be so long."

So I told her the tale of the lieutenant from the first step to the last
of it, making it as mirthful as I could, and, indeed, there was matter
of mirth in that absurdity.

"And I think you will be as little fitted for the rudas men as for the
pretty ladies, after all!" says she, when I had done. "But what was your
father that he could not learn you to draw the sword? It is most
ungentle; I have not heard the match of that in any one."

"It is most misconvenient at least," said I; "and I think my father
(honest man!) must have been wool-gathering to learn me Latin in the
place of it. But you see I do the best I can, and just stand up like
Lot's wife and let them hammer at me."

"Do you know what makes me smile?" said she. "Well, it is this. I am
made this way, that I should have been a man child. In my own thoughts
it