"You'll sometimes get ten different sorts rolled into one," he said
finally, after a long dissertation. "But, generally speaking, there's
just three sorts of 'em. There's Snorters--the goers, you know--the sort
that go rampaging round, looking for insults, and naturally finding them;
and then there's fools; and they're mostly screeching when they're not
smirking--the uncertain-coy-and-hard-to-please variety, you know," he
chuckled, "and then," he added seriously, "there's the right sort, the
sort you tell things to. They're A1 all through the piece."

The Sanguine Scot was confident, though, that they were all alike, and
none of 'em were wanted; but one of the Company suggested "If she was
little, she'd do. The little 'uns are all right," he said.

But public opinion deciding that "the sort that go messing round where
they know they're not wanted are always big and muscular and snorters,"
the Sanguine Scot was encouraged in his determination to "block her
somehow."

"I'll block her yet; see if I don't," he said confidently. "After all
these years on their own, the boys don't want a woman messing round the
place." And when he set out for the railway along the north track, to
face the "escorting trick," he repeated his assurances. "I'll block her,
chaps, never fear," he said; and glowering at a "quiet" horse that had
been sent by the lady at the Telegraph, added savagely, "and I'll begin
by losing that brute first turn out."



CHAPTER II