"Heard I ever the like?" rose in Mrs. Cameron's most imperious tones. "To pass by the house wi' an empty stomach, and it not even a fast! A fast, say I? A feast for Gleneira, and twa glasses o' port wine for Father Macdonald whether he will or no. Marjory, my lass, away with them like good boys to the parlour and cry on Kirsty for the glasses. Will, ye gawk, are there no grooms in Gleneira House that you must be standing there doing their wark. Now, Mr. Wilson, just come you down to terry-firmy, as you would say yourself. You're no golden calf, man, to be put up on a pedestal."
"My dear Madam!" cried he, gaily, clambering down with no small regard to the Graces. "If it is a question of worship, 'tis I who should be at your feet. Facilius crescit quam."
"A cader va chi troppo in alto sale," interrupted Father Macdonald, clambering down on his side. He was a small man with round childish face, possessed of that marvellously delicate yet healthy complexion which one sees in Sisters of Charity; in those, briefly, who take no care for beauty and lead a life of austerity and self-denial. A complexion which a society woman would have given her eyes to possess.
"Hoot away wi' your gifts o' tongues," retorted the old lady, in mock indignation at the perennial jest of strange quotations. "Marjory, just take them ben and stop their mouths wi' cake and wine. And make them drink luck to the auld house that is to be graced wi' its master."
"Ah, my dear Madam," said the incorrigible offender, ambling up the steps, and giving a sly glance at Marjory, "you agree with our friend Cicero, 'Nec, domo dominus sed domino domus honestanda est.'"
Mrs. Cameron treated the remark with silent contempt, and Marjory, leading the way into the morning room where Paul Macleod's portrait hung on the wall, looked back with a kind smile at the two old men who, never having owned chick or child of their own, treated her as a daughter. A sort of dream-daughter, dear yet far removed from the hard realities of every-day familiarity.
"I'm so glad you were passing to-day, father," she said eagerly; "I found a little Neapolitan song among some old music here, and I want you to see if I sing it right."
Mr. Wilson, seated in the armchair, his legs disposed elegantly, straightened his necktie, and made a remark to the effect that the Neapolitans were the most debased Christian population in Europe. And that despite the fact that they lived, as it were, under the very nose of the Pope. An attack which was the result of an ever-green jealousy in regard to the little Jesuit's superior knowledge.
"Neapolitan! Ah! my dear young lady, the patois is almost beyond me. If it had been Roman!" The smooth childlike face grew almost wistful thinking of the days so long ago spent in the still seclusion of the Scotch college, or out in the noisy colour of the Roman streets; a quaint memory for the old man who for fifty years had never seen a town, whose very occupation was passing away from his life, as, one by one, the old adherents to the old faith still lingering among the mountain fastnesses, died and were buried by him.
"Ah! you will manage," said Marjory, cheerfully. "It isn't as if you didn't know the subject, for it is sure to be all about love. Songs always are."