'Oh, won't we be gay?' said Antony.
'Yes; and now I shall go and arrange them.'
What a quiet and pleasant evening was spent after dinner, eaten with an appetite that only sailor-folks and gipsies ever know anything about!
The small caravan was drawn up so close to the big one that, although Mary would not have presumed to come and sit in the 'Gipsy Queen,' she could hear the music very well; for Antony was a good pianist—'good at nothing else earthly,' he used to tell his friends—and piano and violin go well together.
There had been cows and a horse or two in the field when they first drove in, but the kindly landlord took them all away lest they might annoy the wanderers during the night.
Wallace seemed very happy and contented; but though he kept in the big caravan all day he told Antony that it was his duty to be with his mistress by night; but if any attack should be made by evil tramps, he, Antony, had only to shout, and the tramps would be sorry they had come.
The camp cat had insisted on becoming the caravan cat, and a splendid fellow he was; and it may as well be stated here that never, during all this romantic tour, did pussy absent himself of a morning, although he might have been out all night long. On such occasions, just as the horses were about to start, and although there may have been no appearance of him before that, out of somewhere he would come rushing with his fuzzy tail in the air, and take his seat on the coupé. 'Sorry if I've kept you waiting,' he would seem to say, 'but I've been spending the evening with some friends, and time does pass so quickly on such occasions.' But puss made up for his want of rest by night by sleeping on the sofa all the forenoon. Happy cat, no responsibility and never a care!
The weather continued open and sunny for a whole week, and by the end of that time Antony found himself camping near to, and his horses stabled at, the great Highland Spa Hotel at Strathpeffer, with scenery all around him which, although the mountains were clad from foot to summit in driven snow, was charming in the extreme. But there is a charm about this romantic country in winter which does not exist when summer is in its prime, albeit then the trees are green, the wild-flowers are springing, and wild birds are singing in brake and bush and fern. Then during winter, though oak and elm and mountain ash are leafless and bare in the valleys, meadows are green, and if not borne down by a weight of frozen snow the pine-trees wave dark and glorious in the forests that clothe the hills and braes; and though lochs or lakes may be ice-bound, they afford opportunities for many a roaring game, and become for weeks at a time the paradise of the skater. But, more betoken, the rivers, which were high before the frost fell, became streams of fairy-like beauty, and the waterfalls were dream-like in their silent silver sheen.
Antony was not surprised when the kindly landlord emerged from the door of the great Spa Hotel and shook Mary by the hand and Lotty too.
'So glad to see you back again, my dearie'—this to Lotty; 'how bonny you look! And here comes Wallace to shake a friendly paw, and the same old cat to rub his bonny back against my leg.—How do, pussy?—How do, Wallace?'