“Something tells me, too, he won’t be long,” Janet would reply; “and do you know, my lady, that Alba seems to know it also? He cried, ‘Claude! Claude! Claude!’ last night quite distinctly in his sleep, and the sound thrilled every nerve in my body. Oh! I hope nothing has happened to him, my lady.”
“Hush! hush!” replied her ladyship; “you are superstitious, Janet; but you mustn’t try to make me so.”
Even as they spoke there came a patter of tiny feet along the passage, like the rattle of hail on a summer-house roof, and the next moment Alba himself appeared. He flew up, and on to the back of a quaint old chair, and gazed first at Janet and then at her mistress with his garnet eyes.
Lady Alwyn smoothed the graceful creature, and it bent low on its perch, as if enjoying the gentle caress.
“Do you not notice,” said the lady, “how white and snowy its plumage has become of late? It is always thus before my boy arrives.”
“Dear Lady Alwyn, I did not like to tell you before; but all the three days you were at Dumfries Alba was lost, and I never thought to see him again. He was whiter when he came back than the snows on the mountains.”
“How strange!” said Lady Alwyn, meditatively.
“Claude, Claude!” cried Alba.
There is nothing strange in hearing a seagull talking, and Alba’s vocabulary was not a small one.
Lady Alwyn held out her hand; the bird perched on it, and presently was nestling fondly on her breast. This did not altogether please Fingal, Claude’s favourite deerhound. He must needs get up from the skin on which he had been reclining, and lean his noble head on the lady’s lap. And she could spare a hand to fondle the head.