"Well, then," said I, "it will do no harm to set some of the obstacles before you that you may be allowed to deal with the situation bare-handed. "Ye must see, Dandy, that Nancy Stair is different from other women and has been raised in a strange way. I'm no saying it's either a good way or a bad. I am saying that it's far from the accepted way women are bred up generally. It's no mere talent she has--for in a woman that's not harmful and frequently helps to entertain the children, as they come along; but with a girl, raised by men, whose name is ringing throughout the kingdom, who baffles every one by unfailing love and kindness, who has only the religion of making things better for others; a bit of a coquette, with such magnetism that one wants to touch her as one does a flower--I tell ye frankly, Danvers, as Pitcairn says, she's a dangerous contrivance of the Almighty's, and a man had best think many times before he takes her to his bosom as a wife." "It's a singular state of affairs," Danvers answers, with a short laugh, "and one for which, I venture, even Nancy could find no bookish parallel. You tell me that you'd like me for a son-in-law, but warn me against your own daughter as a wife; while my father takes the other view of it: that he would like Nancy for his daughter, but thinks I'm far from being the one suited to her as a husband. Parents are not usually so dispassionate," he added, somewhat bitterly. I felt for the lad, and took a step along a side path. "Ye're both over young as yet," I said, "and it's been less than a month since ye've known each other." And it was here that I had a taste of his fine temper, for he turned upon me in a sudden heat that made him splendid and natural to the eye. "I have not heard that my Lord Stair was over-deliberate in his own wooing," he said. I laughed aloud as he glowered at me, and put my hand on his shoulder, for I liked his impetuous ways and his deil's temper. "There, there," I said, "gang your own gate. I but wanted ye to know what ye might expect in a wife. She'll contradict ye----" "I don't want a wife who is an echo of myself," he retorted. "She's jealous----" "I wouldn't give a groat for a woman who wasn't," he responded. "She is so extravagant," I went on, "that I never let even Sandy know her bills." He made no answer to this whatever, as though it were a matter beneath discussion. "She will forget you for days at a time while she's rhyme-making," I went on. "She will be interested in other men until the day she dies--" his eye darkened at this--"and to sum it up, I don't know any woman more unsuited to you; but if she will have you, you've my consent," and I reached out my hand to him. "God bless you," I cried, and before our hands had parted Sandy came around the turn of the path.