d the fun with Aunt Cecilia as a partner, Donald and a charming
Spanish girl completing the quartette necessary for a real Highland reel.
The piper played, of course (guitars were not good enough for this sort of
thing), and I think we must have kept that first 'hoolichin' up for nearly
twenty minutes. Then Moncrieff and aunt were fain to retire
'for-fochten.'[9]

Well Moncrieff might have been 'for-fochten,' but neither Donald nor his
Spanish lassie were half tired. Nor was the piper.

'Come on, Dugald,' cried Donald, 'get a partner, lad. Hooch!'

'Hooch!' shouted Dugald in response, and lo and behold! he gaily led
forth--whom? Why, whom but old Jenny herself? What roars of laughter there
was as, keeping time to a heart-stirring strathspey, the litle lady
cracked her thumbs and danced, reeling, setting, and deeking! roars of
laughter, and genuine hearty applause as well.

Moncrieff was delighted with his mother's performance. It was glorious, he
said, and so true to time; surely everybody would believe him now that
mither was a downright ma_r-r-r-_vel. And everybody did.

During the shearing Donald and I had done duty as clerks; and very busy we
had been kept. As for Dugald, it would have been a pity to have parted him
and his dear gun, so the work assigned to him was that of lion's
provider--we, the shearing folk, being the lion.

For a youth of hardly sixteen Dugald was a splendid shot, and during the
shearing he really kept up his credit well. Moncrieff objected to have
birds killed when breeding; but in this country, as indeed in any other
where game is numerous, there are hosts of birds that do not, for various
reasons, breed or mate every season. These generally are to be found
either singly and solitary, as if they had some great grief on their minds
that they desired to nurse in solitude, or in small flocks of gay young
bachelors. Dugald knew such birds well, and it was from the ranks of these
he always filled the larder.

To the supply thus brought daily by Dugald were added fowls, ducks, and
turkeys from the _estancia's_ poultry-yard, to say nothing of joints of
beef, mutton, and pork. Nor was it birds alone that Dugald's seemingly
inexhaustible creels and bags were laden with, but eggs of the swan[10]
and the wild-duck and goose, with--to serve as tit-bits for those who
cared for such desert delicacies--cavies, biscachas, and now and then an
armadillo. If these were not properly appreciated by the new