CHAPTER II
THE OLD HOME
Isla rose to her feet, and, suddenly, observing the baby clutching with his chubby hands at the side of his cage and smiling engagingly into her face, she stretched out her hands to him.
"Oh, you darling! Did Isla forget him, then? What a shame!"
She lifted him out, and his small chubby hands met tightly round her neck, and his cheek was laid against hers with a coo of delight. Elspeth stood smiling by, thinking of the wonder and gift of the child that can charm grief away.
"If only you had a good man of your own, Miss Isla, and a heap of little pairns, like me, things would pe easier," she said quaintly. "It's not for me to say, put I whiles think that if there had peen ither laddies in Achree, Maister Malcolm wouldna haf had it all his own wey, which would haf peen a good thing for him."
"Yes, Elspeth, what you say is true; but I shall never have a man or any little bairns," she said with a sigh. "My life-work is cut out plainly enough--and has been from the beginning. I have to save Achree somehow--and I will."
"That would be a fery good thing, no doubt, put the ither would pe petter, my lamb," said Elspeth with such yearning in her eyes that Isla, feeling her composure shaking again, hastily kissed the child and put him back in his little enclosure.
"Donald must positively patent this, Eppie--he would make money by it. It's the cleverest thing I've ever seen," she said lightly.
"It does the turn, and I'm not sayin' put that Donald is clever--clever with hiss hands. It makes up for the gift of the gab which he hass not got. I never saw a man speak less. I whiles ask him if his tongue pe not tired with too little wark."