One day the brothers were lying on the westward slope of the ridge, in front of the cottage. A few sheep, small, active, black-faced, were feeding around them: it was no use running away, for the chief's colley was lying beside him! The laird every now and then buried his face in the short sweet mountain-grass-like that of the clowns in England, not like the rich sown grass on the cultivated bank of the burn. "I believe I love the grass," he said, "as much, Ian, as your Chaucer loved the daisy!" "Hardly so much, I should think!" returned Ian. "Why do you think so?" "I doubt if grass can be loved so much as a flower." "Why not?" "Because the one is a mass, the other an individual." "I understand." "I have a fear, Alister, that you are in danger of avarice," said Ian, after a pause. "Avarice, Ian! What can you mean?" "You are as free, Alister, from the love of money, as any man I ever knew, but that is not enough. Did you ever think of the origin of the word AVARICE?" "No." "It comes--at least it seems to me to come--from the same root as the verb HAVE. It is the desire to call THINGS ours--the desire of company which is not of our kind--company such as, if small enough, you would put in your pocket and carry about with you. We call the holding in the hand, or the house, or the pocket, or the power, HAVING; but things so held cannot really be HAD; HAVING is but an illusion in regard to THINGS. It is only what we can be WITH that we can really possess--that is, what is of our kind, from God to the lowest animal partaking of humanity. A love can never be lost; it is a possession; but who can take his diamond ring into the somewhere beyond?--it is not a possession. God only can be ours perfectly; nothing called property can be ours at all." "I know it--with my head at least," said Alister; "but I am not sure how you apply it to me." "You love your country--don't you, Alister?" "I do." "What do you mean by LOVING YOUR COUNTRY?" "It is hard to say all at once. The first thing that comes to me is, that I would rather live in it than in any other." "Would you care to vaunt your country at the expense of any other?" "Not if it did not plainly excel--and even then it might be neither modest nor polite!" "Would you feel bound to love a man more because he was a fellow-countryman?" "Other things being equal, I could not help it." "Other things not being equal,--?" "I should love the best man best--Scotsman or negro."