t him. "I've
yet to find them."

And at this Nancy broke into a laugh so funny and contagious that the
two of us joined with her.

"Have I failings?" she repeated. "That I have! And so many 'twould be a
day's work to name them.

"Sometimes," she began, "I make light of other folks' religion when I
disagree with it--and that's little short of scandalous. And I belittle
the people whom I don't like--and there's no breeding in that; and
where a friend is concerned I'm like the Stewarts, 'Back to back, and a
claymore in each hand,' and----"

"Ye're right in that," Danvers and I broke in like a chorus.

"And sometimes," she went on, and the humor she found in these
revelations concerning herself was a droll thing to see, "sometimes I
use bad language----"

We men broke into a roar of laughter at this.

"Once, I remember," she said, with the gleam in her eye, "I danced till
three in the morning at Peggy MacBride's wedding, and getting out of
the coach twisted my arm till I thought I'd broken it. About four of
the same morning I rose with a raging tooth, and crossing the room for
laudanum, I struck the elbow of the injured arm against a chest of
drawers, and before I thought I said----"

"What?" Danvers cried, his face lit up with merriment.

"Nothing will ever make me tell," she said firmly, "nothing!"

"Whatever it was, it was moderate. You haven't a vocabulary sufficient
for that situation, Nancy Stair," I laughed.

"Then, too, I'm no respecter of family," she went on, as though set for
complete absolution. "It's mayhap because my own mother was an Irish
gipsy----"

"Nancy!" Dandy cried with amazement.

"She was so," Nancy insisted, "and the present lord's grandfather was a
strange old cummer who ran away with another man's wife----"

"Nancy!" I expostulated, "Nancy, you mustn't talk in that way of your
forbears----"

"Why not?" she inquired.

"It's a thing ye can't explain, my dear; but it just isn't done," Dandy
said.

"Is it not?" she asked, and there was a look in her eyes of amused
amazement. "Is it not? You see, I, in my poor blind way, can not
understand why the naming of a thing is worse than the being of it--but
if ye say it is, I'm amiable. I'll give out that my forbears were all
kings and queens of the Egyptians, and that I ate my haggis when I was
a child from the seat of the throne. It makes no difference to me, for
I'm something more than the Laird of Stair's daughter."

"Meaning the f