‘What will become of any of us?’ said Eleanor. ‘I was gazing out over the sea and wishing we could drift away upon it to some land of rest.’
‘The Glenuskie folk are going to try another land,’ said Jean. ‘I was in the bailey-court even now playing at ball with Jamie when in comes a lay-brother, with a letter from Sir Patrick to say that he is coming the night to crave permission from Jamie to go with his wife to France. Annis, as you know, is betrothed to the son of his French friends, Malcolm is to study at the Paris University, and Davie to be in the Scottish Guards to learn chivalry like his father. And the Leddy of Glenuskie—our Cousin Lilian—is going with them.’
‘And she will see Margaret,’ said Eleanor. ‘Meg the dearie! Dost remember Meg, Jeanie?’
‘Well, well do I remember her, and how she used to let us nestle in her lap and sing to us. She sang like thee, Elleen, and was as mother-like as Mary is to the weans, but she was much blithesomer—at least before our father was slain.’
‘Sweetest Meg! My whole heart leaps after her,’ cried Eleanor, with a fervent gesture.
‘I loved her better than Isabel, though she was not so bonnie,’ said Jean.
‘Jeanie, Jeanie,’ cried Eleanor, turning round with a vehemence strangely contrasting with her previous language, ‘wherefore should we not go with Glenuskie to be with Meg at Bourges?’
Jeanie opened her blue eyes wide.
‘Go to the French King’s Court?’ she said.
‘To the land of chivalry and song,’ exclaimed Eleanor, ‘where they have courts of love and poetry, and tilts and tourneys and minstrelsy, and the sun shines as it never does in this cold bleak north; and above all there is Margaret, dear tender Margaret, almost a queen, as a queen she will be one day. Oh! I almost feel her embrace.’