A few hours afterwards, the three friends had all but forgotten their perilous adventure among the snow, or remembered it only to make merry over it. It is needless to say that Allan’s mother and sister welcomed his friends, or that Ralph and Rory were charmed with the reception they received.
“Well,” said Rory, after the ladies had retired for the night, “I fully understand now what your poet Burns meant when he said—
“‘In heaven itself I’ll ask nae mair Than just a Highland welcome.’”
And now they gathered round the cosy hearth, on which great logs were blazing. McBain was relegated to an armchair in a corner, being the oldest Rory, who still felt the effects of his fall, reclined on a couch in front, with Ralph seated on one side and Allan on the other. Bran, the deer-hound, thought this too good a chance to be thrown away, so he got upon the sofa and lay with his great, honest head on Rory’s knees, while Kooran curled himself up on the hearthrug, and Oscar watched the door.
“Well,” said Ralph, “I call this delightful; and the idea of doing the Highlands in mid-winter is decidedly a new one, and that is saying a great deal.”
“Yes,” said Rory, laughing; “and a beautiful taste we’ve had of it to begin with. I fall over a cliff in the snow and Ralph comes tumbling after, just like Jack and Jill, and then we go to sleep like lambs, and waken with a taste of spirits in our mouths. Indeed yes, boys, it is romantic entirely.”
“Everything now-a-days,” said Ralph, with half a yawn, “is so hackneyed, as it were. You go up the Rhine—that is hackneyed. You go down the Mediterranean—that is hackneyed. You go here, there, and everywhere, and you find here, there, and everywhere hackneyed. And if you go into a drawing-room and begin to speak of where you’ve been and what you’ve done, you soon find that every other fellow has been to the same places, and done precisely the same things.”
“Sure, you’re right, Ralph,” said Rory; “and I do believe if you were to go to the moon and come back, some fellow would meet you on your return and lisp out, ‘Oh, been to the moon, have you! awfly funny old place the moon. Did you call on the Looneys when you were there? Jolly family the Looneys.’”
“There is a kind of metaphorical truth in what you say, Rory,” Ralph replied; “but I say, Allan, wouldn’t it be nice to go somewhere where no one—no white man—had ever been before, or do something never before accomplished?”
“It would indeed,” said Allan; “and I for one always looked upon Livingstone, and Stanley, and Gordon Cumming, and Cameron, and men like them, as the luckiest fellows in the world.”