“Oh?” chimed in Helen Edith, with her sweet, musical voice; “that is the reason your friend would not come with us on our delightful voyage.”
“That was the reason,” said Allan, emphatically, “because he was building a ship of his own, the sly dog.”
“But wherever do you think he means cruising to at all, at all?” added Rory, with puzzled face.
“That’s what I should like to know,” said Allan.
And this thought occupied their minds all the way up to Glasgow; but once there, and the ladies seen safely to their hotels, Rory and Allan sped off without delay to visit this big, mysterious yacht; and they had not been half an hour on board ere, as Rory expressed it, in language more forcible than elegant.
“The secret was out entirely, the cat flew out of the bag, and every drop of milk got out of the cocoa-nut.”
Poor Ralph was delighted at the return of his friends from their long cruise; and now that he had their company he had no longer any wish or desire to remain in the vicinity of the Arrandoon; so giving up his pretty Highland cottage, bidding a kindly adieu to the widow, kissing wee weeping Jeannie, and promising to be sure to return some day, the trio hurried them southwards, to spend most of their time at Ralph’s pleasant home, until the ship should be ready to launch.
Leigh Hall was a lordly mansion, possessing no very great pretensions to architectural splendour, but beautifully situated among its woods and parks on a high braeland that overlooked one of England’s fairest lakes. For miles you approached the house from behind by a road which, with many a devious turning, wound through a rich but rolling country. Past many a rural hamlet; past many a picturesque cottage, their gables and fronts charmingly painted and tinted by the hands of the magic artist Time; past stately farms, where sleek cattle seemed to low kindly welcome to our heroes as their carriage came rolling onwards, with here a wood and there a field, and yonder a great stretch of common where cows waded shoulder deep in ferns and furze, daintily cropping the green and tender tops of the trailing bramble; and here a broad, rushy moor, on which flocks of snowy geese wandered.
Alluding to the latter, says Rory, “Don’t these geese come out prettily against the patches of green grass, and how soft and easy it must be for the feet of them!”
“They’re preparing for Christmas,” said Ralph. Poet Rory gave him a look—one of Rory’s looks. “There’s never a bit of poetry nor romance in the soul of you,” he said.