It is of the true things it does not, perhaps cannot receive, that human nature is most critical.
"That one is nonsense, Donal," she said.

"Isn't it now?
How could a man be a burn, or a wind, or the sun?
But poets are silly.

Papa says so." In his mind Donal did not know which way to look; physically, he regarded the ground.

Happily at that very moment Hornie caused a diversion, and Gibbie understood what Donal was feeling too well to make even a pretence of going after her.

I must, to his praise, record the fact that, instead of wreaking his mortification upon the cow, Donal spared her several blows out of gratitude for the deliverance her misbehaviour had wrought him.