"I don't know about love, sir. I love Oscar and Daddy, but I like Matty so very, very much. To be sure she is a child; but she is pretty, and talks just like a linnet."
"Well, well, boy, the sea will soon drive all that out of your noddle."
So they parted, and soon Creggan's little skiff was dancing over the wavelets, her prow turned towards Kilmara.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Dear boy readers, I hope that many of you will one day visit the Island of Wings—Skye. I've travelled the world around, but I have never yet landed on a wilder or more romantic island. I have no idea of describing the grandeur of its scenery. Walter Scott himself were he alive could not do that; but if I now close my eyes just for a moment, it rises before me, its mountains towering far into the blue of the skies; its thousand-feet-high cliffs; its bonnie bosky glens; its long stretches of heath-clad moorland; its streams; its torrents; its castles, mostly ruins, that carry the thoughts back and away into the long forgotten feudal past; and, last but not least, its dark tarns or lochs, and the awful desolation of some of its cañons.
But independent of the wildness of its scenery, Skye is not only a man's paradise as regards sport, but a boy's as well, if he is fond of fishing. The dark lakes abound in trout, and all around the island the sea is alive with fish.
* * * * * * * * * * *
It was not only for three weeks, but four, that the Nugents remained on the island, and happy weeks indeed they were to Creggan, and I'm sure to Matty also. The bracing sea breezes that blew across the hills and braes had heightened her colour, and she now looked more like a fairy than ever. Only, as a rule fairies don't ride on Shetland ponies through the bonnie crimson heather.
Many a dark night at sea while keeping the middle watch, when hardly a sound was to be heard, except now and then the nap of a great sail overhead, or the dreary cry of some belated sea-bird, did Creggan's thoughts revert to those days he had spent in the Island of Wings with the Nugents.
And when the stars were shining overhead, so big, so clear, and so close that it seemed as if the main-truck could touch them, the sailor-boy used to hope, aye, and pray, that he might be spared to go back to Skye, to see old Daddy, and to meet the Nugents—especially Matty—once again.