But for all I could not keep the anxiety out of my eyes as we walked along. "You do not want to hear," said he, provoking me; for because of Maisie Lennox and my mother, he knew that he had the better of me. "But I do, though!" That was all I could say. For indeed the matter was a mystery to me, as well it might be. Wat Gordon of Lochinvar, sometime favourite of her Grace the Duchess of Wellwood, now gardener to a latitudinarian and cavalier Galloway laird, that had been a ferlie even on a day of miracles. Wat continued to smile and smile. "Well, I will tell you," he said. Yet for a while did not, but only walked on smiling. At last he pursed his mouth and began to whistle. It was a bar or two of the air "Kate Kennedy is my darling." Now at that time I own that I was not bright in the uptake about such things. For I had not till lately concerned me much with love and women's favours, but it came across me all in an instant. "Oh!" I said. "Ah!" said Wat. And we looked at one another and nodded--Wat defiantly. "Kate of the black eyebrows!" I said musingly. "They are joined over her brow," I went on, "and her ear comes straight down to her neck without any rounded lobe. They are two well-considered signs!" Wat Gordon stopped suddenly, and cried out at me. "See here, William Gordon, what mean you by that? What if her eyebrows meet under her chin and her ears hang down like band strings? What is that to you?" "Happily nothing!" said I--for I was patiently paying him out, as it is ever easy to do with a spit-fire like young Lochinvar. "Speak plain, Will," he cried, "or by the Lord I will immediately run you through!" "With a spade," said I, mocking. "Mind, Wat, you are a laird's second gardener now." But when I perceived that he was really angry, I hastened to appease him. "Joined eyebrows and lobeless ear have been held by learned folk to prefigure some temper, Wat!" I said. His brow cleared on an instant. "Pshaw!" he exclaimed, "I like a lass with a sparkle. No mim missie for Wat Gordon of Lochinvar, but a lass that keeps you in doubt till the last moment, whether your best wooing will speed you to a kiss or a bodkin-prick--that's the maid for me!" "For me, I would e'en take the kiss," I said--"take it plain!" "Tush, slow-coach!" he said, "your Earlstoun blood always did run like so much moss water!" Now I had borne the burden of the day on the moss of Ayr, and felt that I need not take his scornful word. "I have been where other than women's bodkins flashed--aye, ten against a hundred, and this was the only brand that wan through," I said, putting my hand on my side. "There was small time for kisses then! Ye may kiss your lass gin ye like, about the woods of Balmaghie. As for me, I prefer to ride upon Cameron's flank, on a day when the garments are rolled in blood."