'No, no, Chops. But I made up my mind to-night in the dark wood, when all alone with Wallace, to—to—— Eh, maybe I mustn't tell even you.'
'Oh, Miss Lotty!'
'Well, poor Chops, to run away.'
CHAPTER XXIV.
'I SAVED IT UP FOR A RAINY DAY.'
THE little gipsy lass was a girl who would have been easy to lead but was rather difficult to drive. A few kind words from the man whom up till this time she had always looked upon as her father would have sufficed to make her do anything in reason for him, and do it joyfully too. When one has no heart in one's work one cannot do even one's duty in the only way it should be done—namely, as a labour of love.
'It's love and it's kindness to all around us,' Mary had often told Lotty, 'which make the wheels of life go merrily round.'
And, young though she was, Lotty could see the truth of Mary's statement in nature everywhere around her, both in the camp, in the forest, and on the sea itself.
Big, rough Bruin, with his jacket like a motor-driver's coat, could never have danced so well and heartily had he not been encouraged by kindness. The blackbird in the copse would scarce have sat so eident, so patient, and so long on her grass-lined nest had not her beautiful orange-billed mate been trilling his song to her from morn till dewy eve, and if she did not know that the flute-like music was meant for her ears and her ears only.
Ay, and those sturdy, bare-legged fisher-dames, with their creels upon their backs, would not have worked so hard had it been for themselves alone; but their Jimmies were on the sea, and their lads of husbands loved them, and so they blithely sang:
'The boatie rows, the boatie rows,
The boatie rows fu' weel;
But mickle lighter is the heart
When love bears up the creel.'