"What has been the great event since ever we came here--the wildest excitement the island can afford?" she said, "the arrival of the pedlar! A snuffy old man comes into the room, with a huge bundle wrapped up in dirty waterproof. Then there is a wild clatter of Gaelic. But suddenly, don't you know, there are one or two glances at me; and the Gaelic stops; and Duncan or John, or whatever they call him, begins to stammer in English, and I am shown coarse stockings, and bundles of wool, and drugget petticoats, and cotton handkerchiefs. And then Miss Macleod buys a number of things which I know she does not want; and I am looked on as a strange creature because I do not purchase a bundle of wool or a pair of stockings fit for a farmer. The Autolycus of Mull is not impressive, pappy. Oh, but I forgot the dramatic surprise--that also was to be an event, I have no doubt. I was suddenly introduced to a child dressed in a kilt; and I was to speak to him; and I suppose I was to be profoundly moved when I heard him speak to me in my own tongue in this out of the world place. My own tongue! The horrid little wretch has not an _h_." "Well, there's no pleasing you, Gerty," said he. "I don't want to be pleased; I want to be let alone," said she. But she said this with just a little too much sharpness; for her father was, after all, a human being; and it did seem to him to be too bad that he should be taunted in this fashion, when he had done his best to preserve a wholly neutral attitude. "Let me tell you this, madam," said he, in a playful manner, but with some decision in his tone, "that you may live to have the pride taken out of you. You have had a good deal of flattery and spoiling; and you may find out you have been expecting too much. As for these Macleods here, I will say this--although I came here very much against my own inclination--that I defy any one to have been more kind, and courteous, and attentive than they have been to you. I don't care. It is not my business, as I tell you. But I must say, Gerty, that when you make a string of complaints as the only return for all their hospitality--their excessive and almost burdensome hospitality--I think that even I am bound to say a word. You forget how you come here. You, a perfect stranger, come here as engaged to marry the old lady's only son--to dispossess her--very probably to make impossible a match that she had set her heart on. And both she and her niece--you understand what I mean--instead of being cold, or at least formal, to you, seem to me to think of nothing from morning till night but how to surround you with kindness, in a way that Englishwomen would never think of. And this you call persecution; and you are vexed with them because they won't talk to you about theatres--why, bless my soul, how long it is since you were yourself talking about theatres as if the very word choked you?"