What's Mine's Mine. Volume I by George MacDonald

Partly, it may be, from such incidents at the outset of their acquaintance, there was for some time no further meeting betwixt any of the chief's family and that of the new laird. There was indeed little to draw them together except common isolation. Valentine would have been pleased to show gratitude to his helpers on that stormy night, but after his sisters' account of their call, he felt not only ashamed, which was right, but ashamed to show his shame, which was a fresh shame. The girls on their part made so much of what they counted the ridiculous elements of their "adventure," that, natural vengeance on their untruthfulness, they came themselves to see in it almost only what was ridiculous. In the same spirit Mr. Sercombe recounted his adventure with Alister, which annoyed his host, who had but little acquaintance with the boundaries of his land. From the additional servants they had hired in the vicinity, the people of the New House gathered correct information concerning the people at the cottage, but the honour in which they were held only added to the ridicule they associated with them. On the other side also there was little inclination towards a pursuit of intercourse. Mrs. Macruadh, from Nancy's account and the behaviour of the girls, divined the explanation of their visit; and, as their mother did not follow it up, took no notice of it. In the mind of Mercy, however, lurked a little thorn, with the bluntest possible sting of suspicion, every time she joined in a laugh at the people of the cottage, that she was not quite just to them.

The shooting, such as it was, went on, the sleeping and the eating, the walking and the talking. Long letters were written from the New House to female friends -- letters with the flourishes if not the matter of wit, and funny tales concerning the natives, whom, because of their poor houses and unintelligibility, they represented as semi-savages. The young men went back to Oxford; and the time for the return of the family to civilization seemed drawing nigh.