“Ye had very little to do,” said Katrin, resenting the adoption of her own argument. “Miss Lily’s things could easy wait. Sup up your broth, and dinna keep us all waiting. Sandy, here’s a grand slice for you. It’s seldom you’ve tasted the like of that. And as soon as you’re done, laddie, hurry and put in the pony, for we must have a good sight o’ the market, Beenie and me, before it gets dark.” Dougal came out to the door to see them off, with his bonnet hanging upon the side of his head by a hair. He felt the presence of something in the atmosphere for which he could not account. What was it? It was some “ploy” among the women, probably not worth a man’s trouble to enquire into. And, as soon as they were off, he had Rory to put in, and await the pleasure of “thae twa” upstairs. He could not refuse Lily any thing, nor, indeed, had he any right to refuse to Sir Robert’s niece the use of Rory, on whom she had already ridden about so often. But the lad from Edinburgh was a trial to Dougal. He had an uneasy feeling that it would not please his master to hear of this visitor, and that a strange man about the house was not to be desired. “If it had but been a lassie,” he said, in that case he would have been glad that Miss Lily had some company to amuse her; but a gentleman, and a gentleman too that was a stranger, not even of the same county--a lawyer lad from the Parliament House. He did not willingly trust a long-leggit loon like that to drive Rory. He was mair fit to carry Rory than Rory to carry him. So that Dougal’s countenance was entirely overcast. There had been some snow in the morning, a sprinkling just enough to cover the ground more softly and deeply than the hoar frost, but that was but preliminary--there was a great deal more to come. Dougal stood when the pony was ready, pushing his cap from side to side and staring at the sky. “Ye’ll do weel to bide but very short time, Miss Lily,” he said; “the tea at the Manse is, maybe, very good, but the snow will be coming down in handfu’s before you get hame.” “We shall not stay long, Dougal, I promise you,” Lily said. There was a tremble in her voice as there had been in Katrin’s and in Robina’s. “The women are all clean gyte!” Dougal said to himself. He watched them go away, criticising bitterly the pose of Ronald as he drove. “A man with thae long legs has no mortal need for a pony,” he said; “they’re just a yard longer than they ought to be. I’m about the figure of a man, or just a thought too tall, for driving a sensitive beast like our Rory. Puir beast, but he has come to base uses,” said Dougal. I don’t know where he had picked up this phrase, but he was pleased with it, and repeated it, chuckling to himself.