"Why?"
"Because they have done--what I have been afraid to do!"
So the day would slip by in idle talk and idler work, until the lengthening shadows warned them they were far from home, and Will would grow restless over the prospect of dinner versus the tea, with which he had more than once been put off on occasions of gross irregularity. While Paul would boast of his freedom from all control, or offer to stand in the breach by begging a meal at the Lodge; since even Mrs. Cameron's tongue softened when it spoke to the laird, and a vein of humour ran through her blame.
"It's clean reediklous, Gleneira," she would say. "Here it is gone ten, and supper was bidden at eight. An' if you expec' me, a Christian woman, to tell Kursty that my son is even as them who mocked Elijah, or that it was I that made a mistake, you're just wrong. An' a' for a wheen trouties, that's no good for kipper or for anything but to cocker yourselves up wi' at breakfast, instead of being contented with good porridge, as your fathers were. But there! we ken find that Esau sold his birthright for a mess o' pottage."
"And I don't wonder at it," Paul would reply gravely; "if he was half so hungry as I am. How much was it, Cameron, that the hook-and-eye man offered me for Gleneira? A man must eat, you know."
Whereupon the old lady would remark that, as she at least knew her duty, his father's son should never lack bread in her house, and so bustle away good-humouredly to hurry on supper. The unpunctuality was not, however, always their fault; and on one occasion followed on an incident which had a curious effect in still further softening Marjory's judgment on handsome, idle, kindly Paul, and introducing that vein of pity, which, in women of her type, seems an almost necessary ingredient of affection. It may be only a triviality, the half-humorous despair of a buttonless shirt, the possibility of dirty tablecloths, or it may go further into uncared-for sickness and loneliness, but the thought of personal discomfort to a man whom she likes is always grievous to women who have not been educated out of their housewifely instincts.
It came about in this wise. There was a certain Loch of the Fairies which, despite its great beauty, Marjory had seldom seen, for this reason. It lay hidden in the highest corries of the deer forest, accessible only by the burn watering the sheltered glen which, from time immemorial, had been the sanctuary; and not even for Marjory would old John Macpherson disturb his deer, or allow them to be disturbed. But Paul thought differently when he found that the girl's face brightened at the idea of an excursion thither; for, to him, the nearest pleasure was invariably the best.
"As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb," he said, with a laugh. "We will start early and make a day of it. And I'll ask Gillespie to come. He is always telling cock-and-bull stories about the big fish there, so we will set him to catch one. I never did."
And Will Cameron agreed also, saying he would take the opportunity to meet the forest keeper on the march, and settle the position of a new fence to keep the hinds from straying. Only old John shook his head, with mutterings regarding future sport and old traditions.
"As if that were not worth all the sport in the world," said Paul, almost exultantly, as, climbing the last bracken-set knoll, and leaving the last Scotch fir hanging over a wild leap of the burn, they filed past a sheer bluff, and saw in front of them a long, narrow, almost level glen, through which the stream slid in alternate reaches and foaming falls. On either side almost inaccessible cliffs; in front of them, cutting the blue sky clearly, a serrated wall of rock closing up the valley. Great sharp-edged fragments from the heights above lay strewn among the sweeping stretches of heather, whence a brood of grouse rose, blundering to the anxious cackle of the hen.