"Hugh, dearest, you and I will have to pray hard that we may be taught to train her aright. She is such a strong character, that she must grow up a noble woman. And don't laugh at her childish fancies. Let us keep her a child as long as we can."
"I have hope for her future now you are here," General Macdonald rejoined. "But a man is quite unfitted to cope with a girl. I have been divided between my love for her and a longing that she should know discipline whilst she is young. I shall hand her training over to you with thankfulness. Make her like yourself, and I shall be happy."
In the days that followed Rowena found that she had plenty of occupation for hands and brain. Mrs. Dalziel was very thorough in her kitchen premises, but the rest of the house sadly needed a lady's supervision. Then there were old friends to be visited, and new ones came to call, and General Macdonald demanded a good deal of his wife's leisure time. He was never so happy as when she was with him. Occasionally he had to go away on business, and then Mysie was to the fore, and often begged for a holiday to go out into the glen with "Mother." One day she and Rowena climbed up the face of a rugged cliff, and explored a cave in which Mysie was pretty sure that Prince Charlie had once hidden.
"Angus says there aren't many caves about here which Prince Charlie didn't know," said Mysie. "It isn't the one that is in the picture when Flora watched by him when he was asleep, but I'm pretty sure he must have found it out. Isn't it a splendid hiding-place? It seems such a pity, there's no one to hide in it. It's quite a waste, isn't it?"
Mysie stood looking round the low-vaulted cave as she spoke with wistfulness in her eyes.
"Only Angus and I know about this," she went on. "It's our secret, but I thought I must tell you. Promise to keep it secret, won't you?"
"Oh, yes," said Rowena, laughing, "indeed I will. And if ever a prince comes by our way, Flora, and wants to be hidden, you and I will hide him here."
"A prince may want our help one day," said Mysie hopefully. "He may be wandering about, trying to get up an army to fight for his throne like David did in the Bible, and then you and I will help him, won't we?"
As Rowena thought of the troubled world in which poor Mysie would be growing up, her face grew grave.
"I hope she won't be a hunter after false visions," she said later on, when talking about her to her father. "She has such a passion for self-sacrifice, and would seal her devotion by death."