“Sitha! son to Gardener Paul, quo’ you!” breaks in an old fish-wife who, with red arms folded beneath her coarse apron, stands watching the yawl with the others. “Now to my mind, he looks mair like the laird than I s’uld want my son to look, if I were wife to Gardener Paul.” “Shame for ye, Lucky!” cries the fisherman to whom she speaks. “Would ye cast doots on the lad’s mither, and only because the lad in his favoring makes ye think now and again on Maister Craik? Jeanny Paul, that was Jeanny Macduff, is well kenned to be as carefu’ a wife as ever cooked her man’s breakfast in Arbigland.” “Ye think so, Tam Bryce?” retorts the incorrigible Lucky. “Much ye s’uld know of the wives of Arbigland, and you to sea eleven months o’ the year! I tell ye, Jeanny came fro’ the Highlands; and it’ll be lang, I trow, since gude in shape of man or woman came oot o’ the Highlands.” “Guide your tongue, Lucky!” remonstrates the other, in a low tone; “guide your tongue, ye jade! Here comes Gardener Paul himsel’.’’ “I’ll no stay to meet him,” says Lucky, moving away. “Puir blinded fule! not to see what all Arbigland, ay! and all Kirkbean Parish, too, for that matter, has seen the twal years, that his boy Jack is no mair no less than just the laird’s bairn when all’s said.” “Ye’ll no mind her, Maister Younger,” says Tom Bryce, pointing after Lucky; “although, to be preceese, what the carline tells has in it mair of truth than poetry.” “I was no thinking on the dame’s clack,” returns Mr. Younger, his eyes still on the nearing yawl, “or whether yon lad’s a gardener’s bairn or a gentleman’s by-blaw. What I will say, in the face of the sun, however, is that he has in him the rudiments of as brisk a sailorman as ever walked saut water.” “There’ll be none that’s better,” observes Tom Bryce, “going in and oot o’ Solway Firth.” Then, eyeing the yawl: “He’ll win to the creek’s mouth on the next reach to sta’board.” Gardener Paul joins Mr. Younger and the fisherman, Tom Bryce. “We were talking of your son,” says Mr. Younger to Gardener Paul. “What say ye, mon; will ye apprentice him? I’ll send him with Dick Bennison, in my new brig Friendship, to the Virginias and Jamaica.” John Paul, gardener to the laird, Robert Craik, is a dull man, notably thick of wit, and slow. “The Virginias!” he repeats. “My son William has been there these sixteen year. He’s head man for my kinsman Jones, on his plantation by the Rappahannock. If Jack sails with Dick Bennison, he’ll meet William that he’s never seen.” “He’ll see his brother for sure,” returns Mr. Younger. “The _Friendship_ goes from Whitehaven to Urbana, and that’s not a dozen miles down the Rappahannock from your cousin’s plantation.”