“And did he do it?”
“Ay, that did he. But he made a compact with the servant that sat beside him, that he wasna to look roun’. The man did look roun’ tho’, just as the hosses had got footin’ on the bank. He saw an awfu’ beast like a big baboon sittin’ up behind, then the ice broke and the carriage sunk. But the laird won the wager.”
“Come on,” said Willie; “I’m hungry.”
CHAPTER VIII
BACK AT THE DEAR OLD FARM
The close of the session had come. Soon the streets, that had all winter long been rendered so gay and cheerful by the flash of the scarlet togas and the merry laugh of the wearers, would know neither toga nor wearer any more for six long months.
The session had ended, and spring had come. There was balm in the breath of the breeze that now blew over the Broad Hill and swept along the wide golf links. The breakers thundered less often in fury upon the yellow sand. They preferred now to roll in more slowly, and to lisp and to sing as they curled in long lines of foam upon the beach. Trees were all in bud, birds were in fullest song, people were busy in their gardens, where tulips, hyacinths, polyanthuses, and the sweet-faced primroses were already blooming side by side with the blue-eyed, gentle myosotis or forget-me-not.
There is always more or less of sadness in the hearts of students at this the time of parting with the comrades they have sat in the same class-rooms with all the winter, have walked with, played with, nay, even fought with mayhap. But now all is forgiven, if, indeed, there be anything to forgive, and in a week’s time the classes are scattered to the four winds of heaven. The majority, it is true, live in Aberdeenshire, but this county is broad and wide stretching—we may say, from the Bullers of Buchan to the rolling Dee, and from the far-off heathy hills of Braemar in the west, to the sea that laves its sand-girt eastern shore.
Some men had gone away into the Highlands of Inverness, and during all the summer would delve and dig or hold the plough. Others away to wild romantic Skye—the Isle of Wings, and others again far North to that Ultima Thule, Shetland, which some one has likened to “a sea-girdled peat-moss.” It is rather, however, a series of sea-girdled peat-mosses, for the islands are very numerous indeed, their shores, when the purple mantle of summer is thrown like a veil of gauze over them, as romantic as they are lonesome and wild.
And Sandie and Willie had parted. But they would think of each other constantly, and they would write almost every day.
Willie was going south to the Riviera with his mother and one of his sisters, but as soon as he should return, his first visit would be up Deeside to the dear old farm of Kilbuie.