He took his bride out with him at first to the beautiful islands of the West. She admitted they were very beautiful, but she didn't like life there, and she went in a constant state of fear and horror of the creepie-creepies. The flowers were gorgeous, but often from the very centre of a lovely bouquet brought by her black maid a centiped as long as a penholder would wriggle. In the centre of huge bunches of luscious fruit little wicked snakes would be asleep, and even as she stood admiring the fruit, one would protrude a tiny triangle of a head and venomously hiss in her face. Oh, it wasn't nice.
Fire-flies were pretty flitting about among the bushes at night, like stars that had lost their way; but she found creatures indoors even in her bedroom that were not fire-flies, and whose perfume was not like that of attar of roses. She even found things in the soup that the chef couldn't account for, and cockroaches' legs are not the thing in a cup of coffee.
So she told Mackenzie, gently but firmly, that she was going home; that she would not give one glimpse of the purple heather for all the beauty and wealth of the Indian Isles.
Mac was very fond of his aristocratic bride. If she had asked him to live in Kamschatka or build her a mansion in lonely Spitzbergen, he would have done so. Therefore, like a dutiful husband, he came home.
He brought with him a black servant-man, or boy who eventually became a man, just to remind him of those sunny isles in the beautiful West; and soon after his return he bought the mansion-house and broad lands of bonnie Drumglen.
Not long after Johnnie's father was born, Mr. Mackenzie died one wild, stormy winter's morning. After being so long in the tropics, I suppose, the climate of the Scottish Highlands hardly suited him. He was found asleep in his library chair, with his hands folded, his toes on the fender, and a red bandana laid as usual over the bald patch on his crown.
His black servant shook him—once, twice, thrice. It was the laird's last sleep, and shaking was unavailing.
So Snowball went and reported the circumstance to his mistress.
"Pore massa done gone dead, I fink, milady. I shakee he, one, two, tree time, but he not sware at me. I fink, milady, he nebber wake no mo' in dis world."
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