regshoe

Like other commenters, I shipped these two as a child before I even knew what shipping was! :)

I reread Kidnapped last year on a sort of Jacobite binge (because of FotH, of course) and, like you, I was perturbed by the way that in the written text, David speaks standard English and Alan speaks a sort of Scots, even though general knowledge and the narration tell us that it should be otherwise. I like your theory about David/Robert Louis Stevenson "translating" both characters' speech to give the reader that same sense of familiarity/foreignness that David himself would have.

I also noticed that David uses the word "plaid" to refer to what is presumably a plain, non-tartan blanket. (He wraps himself in his plaid to sleep, etc.) Whereas in the context of FotH fic and the Highland Dress act, I always used "plaid" to refer specifically to something that was outlawed.