So while the two girls followed Cherry, the other three people sat talking over many things, the two elders closely scanning the young cadet; and he, all unconscious of their scrutiny, showing himself just as he was in truth. Certainly the stories and pranks he rattled off were full of mischief, and as surely they gave small token of a reverent respect for regulations. But there was no taint of anything mean or low, no word that savoured of "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman." The mother breathed freer with every new light thrown upon his West Point life, and felt that her boy had come back to her pure as he had gone away. The eyes of the two old friends met in joyful sympathy time and again, as Magnus talked and told, and their laughter had no reserve of anxious questioning. And when at last Magnus detailed himself to go and look after the girls and dinner, Mr. Erskine stretched out his hand to the happy mother.
"He is a splendid fellow," he said; "a grand boy! I congratulate you with all my heart."
XXIX
SKIRMISHING
O wha can prudence think upon,
And sic a lassie by him?
O wha can prudence think upon,
And sae in love as I am?
—Old Song.
Magnus, meanwhile, with quite as much of the "boy" as the "grand" about him, despite his inches, tiptoed off along passages and through doorways that he knew by heart, following the hum of voices. So presently came out into the small summer kitchen, where a pleasant smell of good cookery steamed and puffed and whiffed from various vessels within and upon the stove. Dishes stood ready on the table, with white-covered pans of rolls just waiting to be baked, but save the old cat, winking and blinking by the oven door, there was nobody in charge.
Magnus gave her a toss up in the air for old times' sake, peeped cautiously out at the broad back steps, then let himself easily down through the open window and came round the other way upon the scene of the sweet chatter that was going on.
The three girls were on the steps, Rose and Violet hulling strawberries, while Cherry in a wide check apron, sat on the lowest step of all with a basket of lettuce at her side, picking over the fresh green leaves, and dropping them into a pan of cold water. A thick clump of lilac bushes served as a screen.
"Do you know," Rose was saying, "I cannot believe it, yet. I think I cried for joy a little bit, when I waked up in the night and remembered that Magnus was really here."
"And doesn't he look well?" said Violet; "and isn't he a beauty?"