she can fancy me as a husband."

He turned very white as he spoke, but his bearing was manly and brave
as that of his father's son should be, and my heart went out to him.

"Sit ye down, laddie," I said, "sit ye down. We'll have a smoke
together and talk it over. I'm not denying that I like you for the two
best reasons in the world. The first, for yourself; and the second,
that ye're your father's son. And to pretend that a wedding between you
two children would not give me the greatest pleasure in life would be
idiot foolishness. I feel it my duty to you, however, as well as to my
girl, to talk the thing over plainly. Have you any notion now," I
asked, "as to Nancy's feeling toward you?"

"None whatever," he answers, gloomily enough.

"You've not questioned her in any way----"

"I'm a man of honor, Lord Stair," he responded, a bit in the air.

"Well, then," said I, "it will do no harm to set some of the obstacles
before you that you may be allowed to deal with the situation
bare-handed.

"Ye must see, Dandy, that Nancy Stair is different from other women and
has been raised in a strange way. I'm no saying it's either a good way
or a bad. I am saying that it's far from the accepted way women are
bred up generally. It's no mere talent she has--for in a woman that's
not harmful and frequently helps to entertain the children, as they
come along; but with a girl, raised by men, whose name is ringing
throughout the kingdom, who baffles every one by unfailing love and
kindness, who has only the religion of making things better for others;
a bit of a coquette, with such magnetism that one wants to touch her as
one does a flower--I tell ye frankly, Danvers, as Pitcairn says, she's
a dangerous contrivance of the Almighty's, and a man had best think
many times before he takes her to his bosom as a wife."

"It's a singular state of affairs," Danvers answers, with a short
laugh, "and one for which, I venture, even Nancy could find no bookish
parallel. You tell me that you'd like me for a son-in-law, but warn me
against your own daughter as a wife; while my father takes the other
view of it: that he would like Nancy for his daughter, but thinks I'm
far from being the one suited to her as a husband. Parents are not
usually so dispassionate," he added, somewhat bitterly. I felt for the
lad, and took a step along a side path.

"Ye're both over young as yet," I said, "and it's been less than a
month since ye've known each othe