(1)
"And well ye ken, Maister Anne, ye should hae been asleep lang syne!" said Elspeth severely.
Master Anne—M. le Comte Anne-Hilarion de Flavigny—gave a little sigh from the bed. "I have tried . . . if you would say 'Noroway,' perhaps? . . . Say 'Noroway-over-the-foam,' Elspeth, je vous en prie!"
"Dinna be using ony of yer French havers tae me, wean!" exclaimed the elderly woman thus addressed, still more threateningly. "Aweel then. . . . Ye're no' for 'True Thomas' the nicht?"
The silky brown head on the pillow was shaken. "No, please. I like well enough the Queen of Elfland, but best of all 'Noroway-over-the-foam' and the shoes with cork heels."
Elspeth Saunders grunted, for there was something highly congenial to her Calvinistic soul in that verse of 'Thomas the Rhymer' which deals with the Path of Wickedness—'Yon braid, braid road that lies across the lily leven,' and she was accustomed to render it with unction. However, she sat down, took up her knitting, and began:
"'The king sat in Dunfermline toun
Drinking the blude-red wine,'"
and the little Franco-Scottish boy in the curtained bed closed his eyes, that he might seem to be composing himself to slumber. In reality he was seeing the pictures which are set in that most vivid of all ballads—Sir Patrick Spens receiving the King's letter as he walked on the seashore, the sailor telling of the new moon with the old in her arms (a phenomenon never quite clear to the Comte de Flavigny), the storm and shipwreck, and the ladies with their fans, the maidens with their golden combs, waiting for those who would never come back again.
"'And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens