“Why,” cried Leslie, turning to his companion (Campanula was seated aloft in solitary state upon his shoulder clutching his hair tight, whilst he held in one big hand her two little sandal-shod, tabi-clad feet), “if that’s Nikko, it’s ten miles off if it’s a foot. What’ve you got to say for yourself, hey?”
“A’weel,” said M’Gourley, glowering at Nikko, “if you want my candid opeenion, we’ve juist gone astray; the country I know well, but these dom roads lead one like a Jack o’Lanthorn. It’s my opeenion that a Japanese road—”
“I don’t want your opinion on Japanese roads, I want your concise opinion about yourself—ain’t you a fool?”
“Ay, ay,” said M’Gourley, as if considering the matter, “a fule I may be, but it’s my candit opeenion that I’m not the only fule in Japan.”
“Well,” said Leslie, “fool or no fool, we’ll have to tramp it, and you’ll have to take your turn to carry the kid, so—Marchons!”
Campanula, so far from being frightened at her awful elevation from the earth, seemed to enjoy the situation, and to find food for a sort of muse of her own, for she began to hum as Leslie took the road with his long stride, and to sing in a lisping sort of way.
“What’s she singing?” demanded her bearer of the sweating Scot at his side.
“Lord knows! ’tis an eldritch chune, and I dinna like to listen to the words. Man, Leslie, but your legs are longer than mine, and I canna keep the pace.”
“Well, I’ll go slower if you’ll listen, and tell me what she’s singing.”
“She’s singing,” gasped M’Gourley, “s’ far as I can make out, some diddering noensense aboot a sugar-candy dragon that a man like a poplar tree is goin’ to hunt, he and a man like a corbie.”