Page 172 - A Jacobite Exile

Chapter 9

meet him.

"So you are Sandy Anderson," he said heartily, with a merry twinkle in his
eye, "my connection, it seems, and the friend of my dear classmate

Jamieson? Come upstairs. Who is this Scotch-looking lad with you?"

"He is my servant and interpreter. His grandfather was a Swede, and to him

he owes his fair hair and complexion. He is a Lithuanian. He is to be
trusted, I hope, thoroughly. He was sent with me by--"

"Never mind names," the Scotchman said hastily. "We will talk about him
afterwards. Now come upstairs. Your letter has thrown me quite into a

flutter.

"Never say anything in English before those Poles," he said, as he left the
shop; "the fellows pick up languages as easily as I can drink whisky, when I
get the chance. One of them has been with me two years, and it is quite

likely he understands, at any rate, something of what is said.

"Here we are."

He opened a door, and ushered Charlie into a large room, comfortably

furnished. His wife, a boy eight years of age, and a girl a year older, were
seated at the table.

"Janet," the merchant said, "this is Captain Carstairs, alias Sandy Anderson,
a connection of ours, though I cannot say, for certain, of what degree."

"What are you talking of, Allan?" she asked in surprise; for her husband,

after opening and partly reading the letter, had jumped up and run off
without saying a word.

"What I say, wife. This gentleman is, for the present, Sandy Anderson, who
has come out to learn the business and language, with the intent of some

day entering into partnership with me; also, which is more to the point, he
is a friend of my good friend Jock Jamieson, whom you remember well in