Hour after hour, the simple soul would tell himself, those two would play themselves like a couple of weans. Three or four times a week the major would, after the morning parades were over, drive out in his tilbury--Andrew perched in the tiny back seat--and spend his afternoon at the little inn which was also the ferry-house over the Doon river where Marrion lodged. Sometimes the two would go out sailing together, but more often they amused themselves on the shore, as they were doing now, dredging for sea things or catching miller's thumbs. It was childish, but--Andrew's lean, anxious face puckered with confused thought as he turned to a sound which he knew would bring with it a more commonsensical outlook on the situation than he, with his passionate love for the woman concerned, his passionate affection for the man, could bring to bear on it. It was the click of busy knitting needles, and they belonged to the landlady of the "Plough." She was a thoroughly good, kindly, healthy woman, whose views were strictly conventional on all subjects appertaining to the relations between the sexes; and as these in those days--and even now, for the most part--were that sex was the only possible tie between two spirits if they happened to be living for the time being, one in a male body, the other in a female--they were not likely to approve of the dredgers of sea-treasures.
"When are yon two gaun to be marriet?" she asked firmly. She was a just woman, and having seen no signs of wrong-doing was willing to believe the best.
Andrew hesitated.
"I'm thinkin'," he replied slowly, "that they are no considering marriage."
"Then they aught tae think shame tae themsels," retorted the landlandy severely. "Her week's up the morrow's morn, an' I'll just tell her she canna stop in my house. It's just clean redeeklus."
Andrew flushed up.
"There's no need for you to say aught, ma'am," he protested eagerly. "She's leavin', anyhow. Ye ken she only came for her health and that's re-established. It would only hurt the lassie--and--and do harm, mayhap."
The landlady looked at him and sniffed.
"The lassie, as you ca' her--will take no hairm from what I sall say to her, an' she'd be the better to give up moithering about wi' majors, and tak' up wi' a gude, God-fearin' man like yersel'."
And with that she carried the click of her knitting-pins back into the inn, leaving Andrew Fraser battling with his own heart. Aye, surely, surely, it would be better, more seemly, more discreet.