And for the little while we were alone 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 matchmaker 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 anyone.” “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 is so I am always; and I go on telling myself about this thing that is to befall and that. Then it comes to the place of the fighting, and it comes over me that I am only a girl at all events, and cannot hold a sword or give one good blow; and then I have to twist my story round about, so that the fighting is to stop, and yet me have the best of it, just like you and the lieutenant; and I am the boy that makes the fine speeches all through, like Mr. David Balfour.” “You are a bloodthirsty maid,” said I. “Well, I know it is good to sew and spin, and to make samplers,” she said, “but if you were to do nothing else in the great world, I think you will say yourself it is a driech business; and it is not that I want to kill, I think. Did ever you kill anyone?”