But matters mend towards evening, and when we pause to rest the horses, I dismount and am penning these lines by the side of a hedge. A rippling stream goes murmuring past at no great distance. I could laze and dream here for hours, but prudence urges me on, for we are now, virtually speaking, in an unknown country; our road-book ended at Edinburgh, so we know not what is before us.
“On the whole, John,” I say, as I reseat myself among the rugs, “how do you like to be a gipsy?”
“I’m as happy, sir,” replies my gentle Jehu, “as a black man in a barrel of treacle.”
Chapter Twenty One.
Glasgow and Grief—A Pleasant Meadow—Thunderstorm at Chryston—Strange Effects—That Terrible Twelfth of August—En Route for Perth and the Grampians.
“O rain! you will but take your flight,
Though you should come again to-morrow,
And bring with you both pain and sorrow;
Though stomach should ache and knees should swell,
I’ll nothing speak of you but well;
But only now, for this one day,
Do go, dear rain! do go away.”
Coleridge.
In Scotland there are far fewer cosy wee inns with stabling attached to them than there are in England; there is therefore greater difficulty in finding a comfortable place in which to bivouac of a night. In towns there are, of course, hotels in abundance; but if we elected to make use of these, then farewell peace and quiet, and farewell all the romance and charm of a gipsy life.
It was disheartening on arriving at the village of Muirhead to find only a little lassie in charge of the one inn of the place, and to be told there was no stabling to be had. And this village was our last hope ’twixt here and Glasgow. But luckily—there always has been a sweet little cherub sitting up aloft somewhere who turned the tide in times of trouble—luckily a cyclist arrived at the hostelry door. He was naturally polite to me, a brother cyclist.