Kit played a few bars; and then the other, drumming on the table, marked the puzzling rhythm.
“I think I see,” said Kit. “It’s a linked note trick; you drive the last quaver across the bar. Let’s try——”
“Noo ye have got it,” the cook approved. “If ye could stop for a week, I’d show ye how a Strathspey is played. Highland music is no’ like ither music.”
“Five beats to a bar are awkward,” Kit agreed. “Anyhow, I can’t stop for a week. In fact, since your foreman has no use for me I ought to shove off.”
“Ye’ll get breakfast before ye tak’ the road. Do ye waken early?”
Kit said when he was at the shipyard he was forced to get up soon, and the cook nodded.
“Then, if ye’ll light the stove in the morning and play yon march, ye might bide until the boss comes back. We do not expect him for two, three days. I reckon ye’d help me chop wood and cut potatoes?”
Kit was willing. He liked the cook and it was not important that the hospitality the fellow offered was the company’s.
“Thank you,” he said. “But why do you want me to play the march?”
The other told him. Long since, when he was a herd boy, a Highland gentleman occupied a shooting lodge near the Scottish village, and in the morning his piper played on the terrace. Kit had not thought the Scots romantically sentimental, and he remarked the cook’s apologetic smile. The fellow admitted that he himself played the pipes.