“What exactly lets anybody in on wearing kilts?” he asked. “I mean to say, suppose I took a fancy to wearing kilts, would that strike a low note in Scotland?”

Kilwhillie, who was also chewing on a mouthful of chicken and ham, gulped it down and murmured, “Kilt not kilts,” with a hint of reproachful pedantry.

“Are you only allowed one then?” the young financier asked. He did not like this kind of restriction.

“Only one at a time.”

“I got you. But what would happen if I were to wear one of these kilts? Would I be run out of the country on a rail or lynched or anything like that?”

“There’s no objection to anybody’s wearing the kilt,” said Kilwhillie. “But there’s always the question of the tartan. Some people who haven’t themselves the right to a tartan wear their mother’s tartan. But I’m against that. I believe it to be contrary to the best tradition. There’s a tendency nowadays to introduce alien notions of female descent into the clan system, so that you actually get women claiming a chiefship, which is preposterous.”

“I suppose now we have women lawyers and preachers and doctors they don’t see why they shouldn’t be Highland Chiefs. So you’d be against me wearing my wife’s tartan, which by the way is the same as our host’s. I tell you I was tickled to death when I found that out.”

“Personally I am strongly against wearing the tartan of one’s wife. Some people without a tartan of their own who want to wear a tartan wear the Stewart tartan as subjects of King George.”

“But I’m not a subject of King George. And I guess George Washington never had a tartan.”

“The solution for you is to wear a kilt of hodden grey.”

“Grey? Is that the best you can do for me?” Royde exclaimed indignantly. “I guess I’m better off as I am.” He contemplated his own polychromatic tweediness with frank admiration.

“Boswell in his account of his trip with Johnson through the Hebrides describes Malcolm Macleod as wearing a purple kilt.”

“Purple? Say, that’s an idea.”

“But I’ve never seen a purple kilt in these days,” Kilwhillie added hastily.

“You will,” the young financier promised with fervour. “But see here, this purple kilt is a secret between you and me. I want to give Carrie a surprise.”

“I shan’t say a word about it,” Kilwhillie vowed.

And he meant it. A fine subject for Inverness-shire gossip if it leaked out that he was responsible for an American financier in a purple kilt! Why, it would be conspicuous even at the Oban Gathering.