’Well, sit down and make yerself happy; better late than never; there’s the cigars— ’I would as lief smoke a pipe, Katie, if ye don’t object—only that I’m shamed to smoke in a fine place like this——’ ’What is’t for, man? Do ye think I got it up for an exhibition—to be put in a glass case! And what’ll ye drink now, Ronald—some Moett and Shandon?’ ’Indeed no,’ said he. ’If I may light my pipe I want nothing else.’ ’But I canna bear an empty table,’ said she. ’Here, auntie, get your flounces and falderals out o’ the road—bless us, woman, ye make the place look like a milliner’s shop! And bring out the punch-bowl frae the chiffonnier—I want ye to see it, Ronald, for it was gien to my gudeman by an auld freend o’ his in Ayr, that got it from the last of the lairds o’ Garthlie. And if ane or twa o’ them happen to come in to-night we’ll try a brew—for there’s naething so wholesome, after a’, as the wine o’ the country, and I can gie ye some o’ the real stuff. Will ye no try a drop the noo?’ ’No thank ye, no thank ye,’ said he, for he had lit his pipe, and was well content. ’Well, well, we’ll have one o’ the lasses in to set the tumblers and the glasses, for I canna thole to see a bare table; and in the meantime, Ronald, you and me can hae a crack be oursels, and ye can tell me what ye mean to do when ye get your certificate——’ ’If I get it, ye mean, lass.’ ’No fears,’ she said confidently; ’ye were aye one o’ the clever ones; I’ll warrant ye there’s na skim-milk in your head where the brains should be. But I want to ken what ye’re ettling at after you’ve got the certificate, and what’s your plans, and the like; for I’ve been thinking about it; and if there was any kind o’ a starting needed—the loan of a bit something in the way of a nest-egg, ye see—weel, I ken a place where ye might get that, and ye wouldna have to whistle long at the yett either.’ Now there was no mistaking the generosity of this offer, however darkly it might be veiled by Kate Menzies’s figurative manner of speech; and it was with none the less gratitude that he answered her and explained that a head-forester traded with the capital of his employer, though, to be sure, he might on entering a new situation have to find sureties for him. ’Is it caution-money ye mean, Ronald?’ she said frankly. ’Well, if a man had no one to speak for him—no one whose word they would take,’ he said to her (though all this was guess-work on his part), ’they might ask him for security. There would be no payment of money, of course, unless he robbed his employer; and then the sureties would have to make that good as far as they had undertaken. But it’s a long way off yet, Katie, and hardly worth speaking about. I daresay Lord Ailine would say a word for me.’