“Weel, my leddy, ye see it’s het, an’ I’m aye amang the fish mair or less, an’ I didna ken ’at I was to hae the honour o’ sittin’ doon aside ye; sae I thocht ye was maybe smellin’ the fish. It’s healthy eneuch, but some fowk disna like it; an’ for a’ that I ken, you gran’ fowk’s senses may be mair ready to scunner (_take offence_) than oors. ’Deed, my leddy, we wadna need to be particlar, whiles, or it wad be the waur for ’s.” Simple as it was, the explanation served to restore her equanimity, disturbed by what had seemed his presumption in lying down in her presence: she saw that she had mistaken the action. The fact was, that, concluding from her behaviour she had something to say to him, but was not yet at leisure for him, he had lain down, as a loving dog might, to await her time. It was devotion, not coolness. To remain standing before her would have seemed a demand on her attention; to lie down was to withdraw and wait. But Florimel, although pleased, was only the more inclined to torment--a peculiarity of disposition which she inherited from her father: she bowed her face once more over her book, and read through three whole stanzas, without however understanding a single phrase in them, before she spoke. Then looking up, and regarding for a moment the youth who lay watching her with the eyes of the servants in the psalm, she said,-- “Well? What are you waiting for?” “I thocht ye wantit me, my leddy! I beg yer pardon,” answered Malcolm, springing to his feet, and turning to go. “Do you ever read?” she asked. “Aften that,” replied Malcolm, turning again, and standing stock-still. “An’ I like best to read jist as yer leddyship’s readin’ the noo, lyin’ o’ the san’-hill, wi’ the haill sea afore me, an naething atween me an’ the icebergs but the watter an’ the stars an’ a wheen islands. It’s like readin’ wi’ fower een, that!” “And what do you read on such occasions?” carelessly drawled his persecutor. “Whiles ae thing an’ whiles anither--whiles onything I can lay my han’s upo’. I like traivels an’ sic like weel eneuch; an’ history, gien it be na ower dry-like. I div _not_ like sermons, an’ there’s mair o’ them in Portlossie than onything ither. Mr Graham--that’s the schoolmaister--has a gran’ libbrary, but it’s maist Laitin an’ Greek, an’ though I like the Laitin weel, it’s no what I wad read i’ the face o’ the sea. When ye’re in dreid o’ wantin’ a dictionar’, that spiles a’.” “Can you read Latin then?” “Ay: what for no, my leddy? I can read Virgil middlin’; an’ Horace’s _Ars Poetica_, the whilk Mr Graham says is no its richt name ava’, but jist _Epistola ad Pisones_; for gien they bude to gie ’t anither it sud ha’ been _Ars Dramatica_. But leddies dinna care aboot sic things.” “You gentlemen give us no chance. You won’t teach us.”