"I hate towns and houses and people—they make me giddy. When I smelt the air coming in the train from the hills, I nearly cried. I told Dad I couldn't never live away from the Highlands, and he said he didn't think I could, and he wouldn't ask me to. Isn't he a darling! And the girls thought a kilt shocking! But you'll let me wear mine again, won't you? Oh, dearest prisoner, how happy you and me will be! Will Shags be jealous, do you think? He's looking at me out of the corners of his eyes, something like Miss Falconer did. And oh I do just look at the darling loch. Isn't it perfectly sweet with the sun on it? There's nothing for the sun to shine on in Edinburgh. When it did come out, it must have been rather disgusted only to have the streets and houses to shine on, instead of the loch and hills and moor. I kissed the earth when we got out at the station. The only thing I really enjoyed at school was learning poetry. I learnt a lovely piece, but when I had to say it, I cried instead, and Miss Gordon wasn't cross, she said she understood, but I wouldn't not have learnt it for anything. It began:
"'The Highlands, the Highlands, oh, gin I were there,
Though the mountains and moorlands be rugged and bare;
Tho' cold be the climate and scanty the fare,
Oh, my dearly loved Highlands, oh, gin I were there.'"
"And it ends:
"'The Highlands, the Highlands, my once happy home
Through thy glens and thy straths my delight was to roam;
Though on a bright shore, where all nature is fair,
My heart's in the Highlands, oh, gin I were there!'"
"I think it was rather cruel to make you learn that," said Rowena; "but we won't think of the time you were away, little Flora; we'll only think of the good time we're going to have now. Do you know, I'm counting the months to my freedom? Only three more months and then I'll be staggering to my feet. I shall have to learn to walk again, shan't I?"
"And you'll lean on my arm," said Mysie with shining eyes; "and then in a few days you'll be riding and rowing and fishing with me. Oh, it will be glorious!"
Time slipped away very pleasantly. Mysie fast regained her health and strength; and then Rowena suggested a couple of hours at lessons every morning. She was delighted with Mysie's quick intelligence, and Mysie was very naïve in her comments upon Rowena's knowledge.
"Why, you know heaps and heaps more than I do! You're as clever as Miss Falconer, and yet you never show off like she did!"
And then spring came, a late spring in the Highlands, but a marvellously beautiful one.
Rowena had her couch moved out-of-doors for an hour in the sunshine sometimes, and she lay and gazed at the soft shadows chasing each other across the distant hills and loch, and watched the green buds bursting into blossom, and the pale primroses in the banks.