"Is it what the laird is like?" echoed the bent but active old man, pausing with a troop of wiry-haired terriers at his heels. "Then he is real bonnie, Miss Marjory; that's what he is."
"So I told her; but she wants to know more." John Macpherson scratched his ear dubiously, then brightened up. "Then it's a terrible good shot he will be. Aye! ever since he was a laddie no higher than my heart. Just a terrible good shot, that's what he is."
"After all," remarked Will, as the old man passed on, "that gives you as good a clue to the laird as anything else would do. Old John meant that as the highest praise. The coachman in all probability would say he was a first-rate rider. I have heard mother call him a good young man, but that was when I had lost five pounds at the Skye gathering, and he had won. The fact being that he had a knack of warping people's judgment; it was he, by the way, who advised me to bet on a man who couldn't putt a bit. He used always to twist me round his little finger when we were boys together--and by Jove! he had a temper. Sulky, too, and obstinate as a mule."
"Thank you," interrupted Marjory, drily; "that's quite enough. Well, I hope nobody nice will buy him."
Will Cameron flushed up quite hotly. "Now, I call that really nasty, Marjory, when it can't matter to you. And you know as well as I do that we want money awfully; you, who are always railing at the black huts, and the lack of chimneys, and----"
But Marjory, after a habit of hers when she was not quite sure of her ground, had shifted it, and passed on to the house, whence the sounds of sweeping and hammering continued. Will shook his head at her retreating figure, smiled, and called out cheerfully:--
"Tell mother not to hurry, he can't come till the evening boat."
Vain message, since you might just as well have made such an appeal to old Time himself as to Mrs. Cameron, who, despite her seventy years and portly figure, was bustling about, the very personification of order, even in her haste. You felt instinctively that every symptom of hurry was the result of a conscientious conception of the importance of her part in the day's proceedings, and that to be calm would have been considered culpable. Yet, as she trotted about, her voluminous black skirts tucked through their placket-hole, not a hair of her flat iron-grey curls was astray, not a fold of her white muslin kerchief, or frill of her starched lace cap was awry, though her aides-de-camp, a couple of sonsy Highland maids, were generally dishevelled, cross, and hot.
"Eh! Marjory, my dear," she cried, catching sight of the latter, as she entered the large low hall, set round with antlers; "ye're just in the nick to help count the napery while I see to the laird's chamber. He will be for having his old wee roomie, I misdoubt me; he was always for having his own way, too. But he will just no have it, that's all. Folks must accept their position, aye! and maintain their privileges in these days, when every bit servant lassie claims a looking-glass to prink at." The last words were delivered full in the face of a pert South country maid, who, with an armful of towels, passed by in rather an elaborate pink dress. It was merely a snap shot, however, for the old lady hurried on her appointed way, leaving Marjory and the offender, who was quite accustomed to being a target, in charge of the dark lavender-scented linen closet. Pleasant work at all times this, of handling the cool, smooth piles; the only household possessions which never seem to suffer from being laid away, which come out of their scented tomb with their smoothness emphasised by long pressure, their folds sharply accurate, their very gloss seeming to have grown in the dark. No fear of moth here; no hint of decay. Marjory, singling out a fine tablecloth and napkins for the laird's first meal at home, and choosing the whitest of sheets and pillow-cases for his bed, found herself unable to believe that long years had passed since some woman's hand had carefully put them away. It seemed impossible that it should be so, and that they should be ready to begin their work as if not a day had passed. Unchanged in a world of change! But the guest himself would be more changed than his surroundings; for he could only have been a boy--not much older than she herself--when he was last at Gleneira. The thought lingered, and after her task was over she wandered from room to room trying to put herself in his place, and guess how it would strike him. For it was pleasant sometimes, when one had an hour to spare, to spend it in that fanciful world of feeling, with which her practical life had so little to do.
His mother's sitting-room! That could not fail to be sad, even though the fair-haired original of the faded portrait in pastels over the mantelpiece had passed from life when he was still a child. Yet, if she by any chance could see even the smallest thing that had once belonged to that mother whose memory was a mere abstraction, who had never really existed for her at all, she would feel sad, and so he must also who had known his. Well, Captain Macleod's mother must have been dreadfully fond of fancy work, to judge by the room! And yet, not so long ago, she herself had been full of childish admiration for that terrible screen in the corner, which now only excited a wild wonder how any responsible human being could have wasted hours--nay! days, months--in producing such a fearful result. It represented a Highlander in full national costume, done in cross-stitch; the flesh was worked in small pink beads, giving a horrible pimply appearance to the face and a stony glare to the eyes; in the distance rose purple silk hills, and the foreground consisted of an over-grown velvet pile mongrel with a tail in feather stitch. In those childish days of admiration, however, it had had a fearful charm of its own, born of its inaccessibility. For, once within a certain radius, the whole picture disappeared into a senseless medley of silk, worsted, and beads. Only distance lent design, making four white beads and a black one a recognisable equivalent for the human eye. As she stood looking at it now, an amused smile curved her lips, with the remembrance that in still more childish days she had mixed up this magnificent Highlander with her conceptions of the absent laird. Probably it was quite as like him now as the crayon drawing, labelled "Paul," of a pallid boy holding a toy ship, which hung on the wall beside the pastel. On the other side was another pallid boy holding another ship, and labelled "Alick." As far as she could judge Alick might have grown up to be Paul, and Paul to be Alick. Only Paul held his ship in his right hand, and Alick in his left; but that was, of course, only because their portraits had to look at each other across the picture of their mother; because, as it were, of the exigencies of Art. She smiled to herself as she drifted on lazily to what Mrs. Cameron had considered the keystone of the laird's position. It was a dim, dignified room, with a dreadful bed. So large, so square, so evenly surrounded with Macleod tartan hangings that a sleeper immured therein might well on waking lose his airs, and which way he was lying. A bed which might have a dozen ghostly occupants, and the flesh and blood one be none the wiser of those dead and gone lairds of Gleneira. Marjory, oppressed by the very look of it, threw the windows, wide as they would set, to the air and sunshine. Even so, it was a dreary, depressing room, especially to one coming alone, unwelcomed by kindred, to his old home. With a sudden impulse of pity she drew from her belt a bunch of white heather and stag-horn moss which she had gathered that morning, and arranged it neatly in a little empty vase which stood on the wide dressing-table. A poor effort, yet it gave a certain air of expectancy to the room; more appropriate also to the occasion than more elaborate garden flowers would have been, since white heather stood for luck, and the stag-horn moss was the badge of the Macleod clan. A charming little welcome, truly, if the laird had eyes to see! Her face, reflected in the looking-glass as she stood smiling over her task, would, however, have been a more charming welcome still could the laird have seen it. And then the sound of wheels on the loose gravel outside sent her to the window in sudden alarm; but it was only the Manse machine, drawn by the old grey horse, with Father Macdonald on the front seat beside Mr. Wilson, who, as he caught sight of her, stood up with profound bows, disclosing a curly brown Brutus wig. And there was Will lounging at the horse's head, and his mother on the steps with dignified gesticulations. Beyond towards the Strath was the wide panorama of hill and moor and sea, flooded in light. The sudden feeling that it is good to be here, which comes even to untransfigured humanity at times, filled the girl's heart with content as she nodded back to her two devoted old friends who were now both standing up in the dogcart, waving their hats. How good everyone was to her! How happy they all were together in the Glen! And she had never before seemed to realise it so completely.