Delicious hours those! To have seen Elsie hanging on to her brother’s arm, and he smiling as he looked fondly down into her sweet face, a stranger would have taken them for lovers.
Then what castles in the air they did build to be sure! What day-dreams were theirs! Of the time when he should be minister of some beautiful old church by the banks of a stream, and she, Elsie, his housekeeper. Already, in imagination, they could hear the church-bell tolling of a Sunday morning, and see the well-dressed congregation slowly wending their way through the auld kirkyard to the door.
And Sandie’s sermons should be such rousing ones; couched in eloquent language, that should go straight to the heart of every hearer, and sometimes even bring tears to the eyes of the listeners.
Of course, dear old father and mother would be in the manse pew. Then the manse itself, an old-fashioned house, with fine old-fashioned gardens, and rare old-fashioned flowers, gardens in which, in the spring-time, the mavis and the blackbird would all day long fill the air with their charming melody, and the lark sing above till past the midnight hour.
Oh, they had it all cut and dry, I assure you; but dear me, what a long time they would have to wait yet before there was a chance of those dreams coming true!
Never mind! were they not young? Ah! hope beats high in youthful hearts.
So back they would saunter through the golden-tasselled broom, and then Sandie would begin his lucubrations.
. . . . . .
Just the very day before Sandie had intended starting north and east to get an engagement as a herring-fisher, he was agreeably startled by a visit from Willie, who had just returned from the Riviera.
“Had you been a day later,” Sandie said, as he grasped his friend’s hand, “you would not have found me.”