“Why, Kenneth! Archie!” he cried, extending a hand to each, “my dear old shipmates, ‘pals,’ and partners, how are you?”
“Took you by surprise, eh?” replied Kenneth, laughing.
“Why, the biggest and the best surprise I’ve had for many a day. But how are you? and where have you come from last? and how goes the farm out in the West?”
Harvey put a dozen other questions, but he gave his friends no time to answer one.
I leave my readers to guess whether or not they spent a pleasant, happy evening together. Ay, and not one, but many. For Harvey was not going to let them go for a long time, you may be sure. So they stayed on and on for weeks. There was plenty of sport and fun to be got all day, but, nevertheless, the evenings were always most pleasant. There was so much to talk about, and so much to tell each other, that time fled on swallows’ wings, and it was always pretty near the—
“Wee short ’oor ayout the twal,”
before they parted for the night.
Need I say that one of the first places visited by Kenneth and Archie—and they stole away all alone—was Kooran’s grave, and the fairy knoll? They were delighted to find the former carefully kept, and quite surprised to find the latter completely furnished. The inside was a cave no longer, except in shape. It was a library, a boudoir, call it what you may.
“How mindful of dear Harvey!” said Kenneth.
“Yes, indeed,” replied Archie; “and think, too, of his goodness to my dear father, of the comfortable house he dwells in, and the smiling little croft around it.”