“All right,” laughed Babe. “And I’ll show you that my memory isn’t short. Then we shall be quits again.”
Babe wrote Bob all about the cairngorm pin, but she didn’t mention it to her traveling companions. Babbie would think she was silly to talk about it. She knew such loads of men, and they were always giving her flowers and pretty trinkets. So merely to avoid discussion Babe said nothing at all about the matter, letting the rest think that she had bought the pin herself as a memento of her dear Oban.
“Nothing else will be quite so nice!” she sighed as the train pulled out of the little station, and the others all felt a little the same way,—except Madeline, of course, who always loved beginnings.
“Why do we stay at Glasgow to-night?” she said. “We’ve done that already. Let’s take Mrs. Hildreth to a farewell tea at Miss Jelliff’s, and then go on to Balloch. There’s an inn there with the loveliest name—Tullichewan Inn. Doesn’t that sound quaint and out-of-the-way? Then we shall be one station further on toward the Trossachs, and we shan’t have to get up so early in the morning.”
“That argument appeals to me,” laughed Mrs. Hildreth, and it was settled to go on to Balloch.
“What are the Trossachs, anyway?” inquired Betty plaintively. “People have talked to me about the Trossachs ever since I knew I was coming to Scotland, but when I’ve asked just what they were, I never could find out.”
“This guide-book says that the word means ‘bristling country,’” Babbie explained. “All the hills that you coach over are thickly wooded. There are lakes, too, but I guess they haven’t anything to do with the name.”
Next day Babe amended the definition to “dripping country.” Scotch mists alternated with unmistakable showers all day, the hills were hidden behind thick mantles of gray fog, and the picturesque little lakes looked forlorn enough, with the big rain-drops pattering down on their placid waters.
“Catechism for travelers,” announced Babe. “Query one: How do you go through the Trossachs? Answer: In a rain. I know what you’re going to say, Betty, but I’ve talked to all the people on board who’ve been through before or who’ve had friends who’ve been through, and that’s the correct answer. Query two: What is a Trossach coach? Answer: A place where everybody’s umbrella drips on everybody else and pokes your hat off, and you wish you were snug at home by the fire. Besides, they aren’t coaches at all; they’re nothing but four-seated mountain-wagons. And I thought coaching was going to be one of the most glorious joys of the summer!” Babe sighed and carefully emptied the water out of the wrinkles in her ulster.
But the coaching trip through the English lakes satisfied Babe’s most extravagant anticipations. It came after a commonplace, very rainy week in Edinburgh, where everybody was too busy getting over colds caught in the Trossachs rain-storm to make any progress with “dominant interests.” It was a lovely, sparkling morning, and the coach which was to take them from Keswick to Windermere was a real coach, with seats inside for any one who was foolish enough to want them, seats on top which commanded a splendid view of the pretty English country, and a red-coated, red-faced English coachman who dropped his h’s and cracked his long whip in exactly the approved story-book fashion. But the most exciting part of the day came when they stopped for lunch at the little village of Grasmere.