'Like the baby you are. Jump!'
Lotty jumped, and was soon deposited high and dry in the large caravan.
Wallace had gone away somewhere a jet black dog; he now returned a pure white one, and it took Antony full two minutes to make him presentable.
Real finnan-haddocks (hot, done to a turn, and served up between snow-white towels), oat-cakes, butter as sweet as spring primroses, new-laid duck-eggs, and coffee whose fragrance and aroma filled the whole saloon.
Antony was hungry, with a hill or mountain hunger, and gay with it all. So, too, was his little companion. Kind and generous treatment spoil some children; but Lotty was far too old-fashioned, pretty and lady-like though she was, to be spoiled.
'Isn't this life idyllic, my little pal?'
'I'm sure, Mr Blake, it is perfectly idyllic. But what does idyllic mean?'
'It means just this,' he answered with youthful rapture, 'it means all the beauty and the romance and peace and poetry we see around us both outside and in. That is idyllic.'
CHAPTER XIX.
SPORTING-TIME IN WOODS AND WILDS.
THE storm that imprisoned Antony's caravans will long be remembered in the Scottish Highlands for its renewal day after day for more than a week. Blizzard after blizzard blew, and even at last, when the snow ceased to fall and the sun brought a return of fine weather, winter held its tight grip upon everything. The roads were impassable, and for a time even snow-ploughs had but little effect upon the mighty wreaths and banks. But worse than these banks were the filled-up hollows and ravines in which some people averred it would take months to melt the snow.