His presence, with all that it involved, had made a most happy change in the maidens’ lives; and yet there was still great dreariness, much restraint in the presence of constant precaution against violence, much rudeness and barbarism in the surroundings, absolute poverty in the plenishing, a lack of all beauty save in the wild and rugged face of northern nature, and it was hardly to be wondered at that young people, inheritors of the cultivated instincts of James I. and of the Plantagenets, should yearn for something beyond, especially for that sunny southern land which report and youthful imagination made them believe an ideal world of peace, of poetry, and of chivalry, and the loving elder sister who seemed to them a part of that golden age when their noble and tender-hearted father was among them.
The boy’s foot was on the turret-stairs, and he was out on the battlements—a tall lad for his age, of the same colouring as Eleanor, and very handsome, except for the blemish of a dark-red mark upon one cheek.
‘How now, wee Andie?’ he exclaimed, tossing the baby boy up in his arms, and then on the cry of ‘Johnnie too!’ ‘Me too!’ performing the same feat with the other two, the last so boisterously that Mary screamed that ‘the bairnie would be coupit over the crag.’
‘What, looking out over the sea?’ he cried to his elder sisters. ‘That’s the wrang side! Ye should look out on the other, to see Glenuskie coming with Davie and Malcolm, so we’ll have no lack of minstrelsy and tales to-night, that is if the doited old council will let me alone. Here, come to the southern tower to watch for them.’
The sisters had worked themselves to the point of eagerness where propitious moments are disregarded, and both broke out—
‘Glenuskie is going to Margaret. We want to go with him!’
‘Go! Go to Margaret and leave me!’ cried James, the red spot on his face spreading.
‘Oh, Jamie, it is so dull and dreary, and folks are so fierce and rude.’
‘That might be when that loon Hepburn had you, but now you have me, who can take order with them.’
‘You cannot do all, Jamie,’ persisted Eleanor; ‘and we long after that fair smooth land of peace. Lady Glenuskie would take good care of us till we came to Margaret.’