Archie, with his hair standing on end at his own audacity, gave the order hurriedly, and went out after his sister, with a sort of despairing sense that he had now committed himself beyond recall, and that the stories he had read in books about the miseries of men who had large sums to make up and no prospect of finding the wherewithal, were about in his dread experience to come true. The gamekeeper and the groom discussed the abrupt withdrawal after their fashion, and with no particular precaution not to be heard by the subjects of their discourse. “Yon’s a queer pair to be gentry,” said Rankin. “I would have said a lad and a lass from Glesco in an excursion; just the kind that comes doun at the fair-time, and has nae manners nor education. I’m no much accustomed to that kind--A smell o’ dougs! set her up! Mony a leddy has sat there and had her crack, and never a word about the dougs, poor things. The smell of a mill would maybe be more in her way.” “Whisht, man,” said the groom, “they’re maybe listening. Where could they get their manners or their eddication? They’re just Jims Rowland’s bairns that my father knew when he was in the foundry; and they’ve lived a’ their lives with Jane Brown, that was ance the auld man’s joe, and micht have been my mother if a’ things had gane straight--think o’ that! I micht have been their cousin, and I’m just the groom in the stables. ‘Od! I could have brought doun Missie’s pride if I had been a drap’s blood to her. They’re no a preen better nor you and me.” “In the sicht o’ heaven,” said Rankin, “there’s no one person better than anither: I dinna just rank myself with the commonality. But I’ll allow that the auld family has the pull of it even with me. There’s something about Lady Jean now--ye canna say what it is, and yet it maks a difference. I’m a man that has seen a’ kinds. The real gentry, and what ye may call the Glesco gentry, and them that’s just shams through and through. The Glesco gentry has grand qualities sometimes. They just never care what they spend. If ye put a fancy price upon a little doug, they just say, ‘Oh ay, nae doubt you have great trouble in rearing them,’ and gies ye your price without a word. The tither kind’s no that liberal--they canna bide to be imposed upon. They just stiffen up, and they say, ‘That’s mair than I thought of giving, and good day to ye.’ But I canna bide them that would and then they wouldna, that just hankers and grudges and have nae money in their pouches. Without money, nae man has any right to take up my time coming here.”