"Never ye mind aboot princes--they are kittle-cattle, and Patsy was juist letting you see that ye should carry a speerit in ye that no prince in ony land could daunt."
"Oh, if it were only fighting," said Louis, "I should not be afraid. But as it is, I shall not set my foot here again till Patsy sends for me--"
"Which she is like to do the morn's mornin', just to see if ye are still in the sulks! Laddie, can ye no see that it is just an amusement to her? She doesna mean to be cruel, but only wants ye to be a man amang men--and mair parteeclar amang weemen!"
"Yes, I know," said Louis, disconsolately, "she does it for my good. She has explained that to me several times. But somehow it does not seem to help much!"
"Louis Raincy," said the old lady, severe for the first time, "be a worthy son of your forbears. There are forty of them in the Raincy chapel up yonder in the wood. It wad be an awesome thing to be carried in among them and you not worthy. I am a woman--an auld maid if you like--but I am a Minto, and here I am braving the great ones of the earth to look after Patsy--me that would a thousand times raither be at Ladykirk with Eelen Young and that silly Babby Latheron, weighing out the sugar and spices for the late conserves--the bramble and the damsons and the elderberry wine."
In spite of all this good advice, or perhaps because of it, Louis Raincy went off without returning to the drawing-room, and with what he took to be despair in his heart. Patsy was by no means the old Patsy. She would never be again. Yet when he began to turn matters over in his head after he had reached his quarters, he could not remember a time when Patsy had not tyrannized over him, trampled him under foot, and variously abused him, even from the time of their infantile plays with sand castles and sea-shells built, architected, and ornamented on the seashore between the Black Head and the estuary of the Mays Water.
But somehow when Patsy did the same thing in London, and in the face of other men, Louis did not enjoy the process so much.
"Hech, my daisy," said Miss Aline, as she and Patsy went back to her parlour after the Prince of Altschloss had taken his leave, "that laddie, Louis, has ower muckle o' his mither in him. She's a McBride, and guid blood, but Dame Lucy is juist like some preserves. Ye put in good berries. Ye strain to perfection. The sugar and the spice and the correct time for boiling--skimming and stirring done with your own hand--yet after all the stuff will not jell. It will harden in no mould because it is unstable as water. That is the boy's mother, the Lady Lucy. As for the lad, God send him something that will harden him, so that when his grandfather dies, another De Raincy of the right breed may rule in his stead. At present he is overly much after the pattern of his mother!"