Max nodded silently, and hurried down to talk for a few moments with Tavish and Scoodrach of the patient’s state. Then he hurried back, thinking, as he went up to Kenneth’s room, that it must be months since he came, and he wondered how it was that he could feel so much at home.
Chapter Twenty Two.
The Doctor’s Task done.
A fortnight’s terrible anxiety, during which Max rarely left Kenneth’s room. Every morning, though, it grew into a custom that he should go down to the old castle yard, where Tavish, Long Shon, old Donald, and Scoody were always waiting to hear his report of the patient’s progress.
“An’ has she askit for the pipes?” old Donald whispered mysteriously; and, on receiving an answer in the negative, he looked reproachfully at the speaker. “She’s waiting and retty,” he would say; “and a good lilt on ta pipes would do her all ta petter as ta physic stuff.”
At the end of a week, Donald determined to try his medicine unasked, and struck up “The March of the Mackhai” under Kenneth’s window.
The doctor rang the bell furiously, and Grant, who guessed what it meant, ran out and seized the old piper, to bundle him out of hearing.
That day there was nearly murder done, for Donald drew his sgian-dhu and swore he would have the butler’s “bluid,” to which Grant responded by firing half a pail of water at the furious old man, who was then carried off, foaming and muttering wildly in Gaelic, and was only calmed down by Long Shon telling him it would “kill ta young Chief” if he made so much noise.