“Jim,” said Myra, “I have so looked forward to showing you my home.”
He stepped close to her at once. “Then show it to me, dear,” he said. “I would rather be alone with you in your own little home—I saw it, as we drove up—than waiting about, in this vast expanse of beauty, for Lady Ingleby.”
“Jim,” said Myra, “do you remember a little tune I often hummed down in Cornwall; and, when you asked me what it was, I said you should hear the words some day?”
Jim looked puzzled. “Really dear—you hummed so many little tunes——”
“Oh, I know,” said Myra; “and I have not much ear. But this was very special. I want to sing it to you now. Listen!”
And looking up at him, her soft eyes full of love, Myra sang, with slight alterations of her own, the last verse of the old Scotch ballad, “Huntingtower.”
| “Blair in Athol’s mine, Jamie, Fair Dunkeld is mine, laddie; Saint Johnstown’s bower, And Huntingtower, And all that’s mine, is thine, laddie.” |
“Very pretty,” said Jim, “but you’ve mixed it, my dear. Jamie bestowed all his possessions on the lassie. You sang it the wrong way round.”
“No, no,” cried Myra, eagerly. “There is no wrong way round. Providing they both love, it does not really matter which gives. The one who happens to possess, bestows. If you were a cowboy, Jim, and you loved a woman with lands and houses, in taking her, you would take all that was hers.”
“I guess I’d take her out to my ranch and teach her to milk cows,” laughed Jim Airth. Then turning about under the tree and looking in all directions: “But seriously, Myra, where is Lady Ingleby? She should keep her appointments. We cannot waste our whole afternoon waiting here. I want my girl; and I want her in her own little home, alone. Cannot we find Lady Ingleby?”