"I'm sure I don't want anything," put in Marjory, with her head in the air.
"Don't be talkin' havers, child. I tell ye a woman's aye wantin' it. Auld as I am----"
"My dear Madam," expostulated Mr. Wilson.
"Haud your whist, minister," interrupted Mrs. Cameron, tartly; "what will you be knowing o' a woman's heart? I tell you she may be auld and grey, she may hae left half the pleasures o' this world behind her, she may hae been a wife for two score years, and spent her heart's bluid in rearing weans, but what's left o' the heart will be turnin' wi' regret to the time when the auld body who sits on the tither side o' the fire--girding at his food, maybe--was courtin' her. Or, maybe, when some ither auld body that's no at the tither side of the fire was courtin'. There's no sayin'."
There was a silence: and then the old priest said under his breath: "Amor a nullo amato amor perdona."
Mr. Wilson nodded his brown Brutus wig in assent. He did not mind that sort of Italian. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the humanities could understand so much. So they were merry over the cake and wine; merry even over the parting with it in obedience to the minister's Horatian order: "Lusisti satis, editsi satis, alque bibisti, Tempus abire ibe est"--which Mrs. Cameron insisted on having explained to her word by word. It was a complete exposition, she asserted, of the whole duty of man as viewed by men. To eat, to drink, to amuse themselves, and then to run away.
That same evening, in the mirk end of the gloaming, Marjory, walking in the garden between the great borders of clove pinks which were sending out their fragrance to meet the coming night, heard the feu de joie, arranged by old John Macpherson to greet the laird's arrival, go off like the beginning of a battle. Half an hour afterwards Will Cameron returned, calling loudly for his supper, and full of enthusiasm.
"Upon my word, Marjory, I think he is handsomer and more charming than ever."
"Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain," said the young lady, taking a leaf out of Mr. Gillespie's book.
People who only know the West Highlands in the rainy months of August and September, when a chill damp, almost suggestive of winter, comes to the air, will scarcely credit the intense heat which June and July often bring to the narrow glens, shut in on all sides by sun-baked mountains. Then the springs fail, and the cattle break through the fences, seeking the nearest point of the river; or stand knee-deep in the estuary water, flicking away the plague of flies with their tails, and lowing seaward to the returning tides. Then the burns, fine as a silver thread down the mountain sides, run with a clear bell-like tinkle through the boulders over which they will dash with a roar and a rush in the coming Lammas floods. Then the cotton grass hangs motionless on its hair-like stem, and the bog myrtle gives out a hot, dry, aromatic scent, to mingle with that of the drying grass. On such days as these, everything having life instinctively seeks the shade. So Marjory Carmichael, on the morning after the laird's return, left the dusty high-road, crossed the fast hardening bogs by the tussocks of gay mosses tufted with bell-heather, and so continued her walk along the alder-fringed bank of the river. Even at that early hour not a leaf was stirring; the very bees hung lazily on the pale lilac scabious flowers, and the faint hush of the river had a metallic sound. Marjory, clambering down a fern-clad bank, sat down beneath a clump of hazels, set with green nuts. Below her the river, between the alder stems, showed olive and gold in sunlight or shade, with every now and again a foam fleck sailing by; for, some fifty yards above her resting-place, the Eira, fresh from a boisterous half-mile scramble among the rocks, rushed through a narrow chasm at racing speed, and fell recklessly, dashing itself into a white heat of hurry in a seething whirling pool set in sheer walls of rock, and thence finding outlet for its passion in a wider basin, and so, with ever clearing face, sliding into peace in the dark oily pool beneath the bank where Marjory sate. Her favourite nook, however, in all the river side, lay higher up, close to the leap, where she could watch the gleaming sea-trout and an occasional salmon patiently trying at the fall, see the flash of the rapids beyond the fringing ferns, or mark the drifting shadows on the opposite hillside. But the single rowan tree, clinging with distorted roots to the heather-tufted cliff, flung its branches over the fall, and gave no shade elsewhere; hence on this hottest of hot July mornings Marjory chose the hazel hollow instead, and leaning back among the flowering grasses, which sent a pinkish bloom of tiny fallen blossom on her curly hair, drew a long, closely written letter from her pocket, turned to its last sheet, and began to read it. Not for the first time, but then Cousin Tom's letters were worth a dozen of most people's, especially when they had something to say, as this one had:--
"What a hurry you seem to be in to begin work; and I am always in such a hurry to begin play. But then you have arrived, or are about to arrive, at the years of discretion, and I am a mere child of forty-one. Twenty years between us, dear! It is a lifetime; and what right have I, or any other old foozle, to dictate to you, Mademoiselle Grands-serieux, who, clever as she is, hardly knows, I think, when her most affectionate and unworthy guardian is attempting a jest. It is an evil habit in the old. Expect to hear from the School Committee in Hounslow before many days are over. I think all is settled fairly, but I hear there is no chance of your being needed before the beginning of November. And this is still July. Three whole months, therefore, ere Mademoiselle need take up the burden of teaching vulgar little boys the elements of Euclid. And yet the momentous coming of age, when Wisdom, let us hope, is to be justified of one of her children, is this week. Marjory, my dear! Fate has given you a real holiday at last! Of course, I am an incorrigible idler compared to you, but, believe me, my heart has ached at times over your sense of duty! Life is not all work, even if it is not all beer and skittles. So take the goods the gods provide (as dear old Wilson would say in the proper tongue--my Latin is merely a catalogue of dry bones)--put away all the books--let two and two be five or five hundred for the time, while you cross the Asses' Bridge with the rest of humanity. Wake up, my dear little girl! or rather begin to dream! Of what? you ask. Of anything, my dear, except Woman's Suffrage. By the way, I have six new reasons against the latter, which I will detail to Mademoiselle Grands-serieux when a detestable bacillus, who will neither be born nor die, permits of my joining her in the earthly paradise. Meanwhile have a good time--a real good time."
Marjory leant back again on a great basket of spreading lastrea which gave out scent like honey as she crushed it. Cousin Tom was delightful, and perhaps he was right. The sudden content with Life as it was which had come to her the day before when she realised its peace, its beauty, its kindliness, returned now. Through the arching hazel boughs the sunlight filtered down in a tempered brilliance restful to the eyes; a grasshopper shrilled in the bents; a yellow butterfly, settling on a leaf beside her, folded its wings and, apparently, went to sleep. An earthly paradise, indeed! Surely if one could dream anywhere it would be here.
Suddenly a faint shwish-shwish broke the silence. Shwish-shwish, at regularly recurring intervals. Marjory, recognising the sound, wondered listlessly who could be fishing the lower pool at this early hour. One of the keepers, perhaps, hopeful of a trout for his master's breakfast; rather a forlorn chance even in the pot above, with that cloudless sky. A jarring whizz, accompanied by a convulsion in the alder branches, broke in on her drowsiness, making her sit up with intelligent appreciation of the cause. The somebody, whoever he might be, was "in" to the tree. Another convulsion, gentler, but more prolonged; another short and sharp, as if somebody were losing his temper. Then a persuasive wiggle to all points of the compass in turn, and finally the whirr of a check reel.
Somebody