They would so soon be independent of home discipline that that independence was to a degree already allowed.
Black Hill did not often question Ian's comings and goings, nor Glenfernie Alexander's.

The school-room saw the latter some part of each morning.

For the rest of the day he might be almost anywhere with Ian, at Glenfernie, or at Black Hill, or on the road between, or in the country roundabout.
William Jardine, chancing to be one day at Black Hill, watched from Mrs.Alison's parlor the two going down the avenue, the dogs at their heels.

"It's a fair David and Jonathan business!" "David needed Jonathan, and Jonathan David." "Had Jonathan lived, ma'am, and the two come to conflict about the kingdom, what then, and where would have flown the friendship ?" "It would have flown on high, I suppose, and waited for them until they had grown wings to mount to it." "Oh," said the laird, "you're one I can follow only a little way!" Ian and Alexander felt only that the earth about them was bright and warm.
On a brown-and-gold day the two found themselves in the village of Glenfernie.

Ian had spent the night with Alexander--for some reason there was school holiday--the two were now abroad early in the day.
The village sent its one street, its few poor lanes, up a bare hillside to the church atop.