“You know she hasn’t any girls to play with either,” Rose reminded Ruth. “Only that great pack of stupid boy cousins. I’m sure she’ll be glad to see us, and I just love her.”
Whiff!!
And there they were, side by side, beside a noisy, rushing stream that leaped down small precipices and swirled round tiny promontories in the liveliest manner imaginable, now shining in the sun, now dark under shadowy copses or bending trees. A most delectable stream.
Wading about in one of the larger pools was a dark, pretty girl dressed in a short kilted skirt, with a gay plaid wrapped about her shoulders. Her black hair hung down her back in curls, tumbling from under a fetching cap with a long scarlet feather in it. She was kicking the water about with her feet and laughing. On the shore, beside her shoes and stockings, lay a rod and creel. “I came here to meet you,” she called, “and got weary waiting, after catching as fine a string of trout as any one would wish to see. Come, come down the bank and play in this fresh water a wee bit before we start back to Osbaldistone Hall, where we are to have a try with the falcons, so my uncle said.”
Rose and Ruth found themselves looking just as Scotch as the lassie before them, in plaid and kilted frocks. Down the little bank they scrambled, and off came shoes and stockings in a jiffy. Di opened her creel for them to see the shining catch, and begged them to try a cast in the pools above. But the two preferred to wade, especially as they hadn’t a notion how to fish with the artificial flies Di had been using.
“We fish with worms at home,” said Rose, “though Dad says he’s going to teach us fly fishing next summer. You must be a dandy at it.”
“I cannot allow my cousins to beat me at any such sport,” answered Di, as the three clambered up on a rock lying in mid-stream and squatted down to watch the racing water. “They box and wrestle and tramp, and jeer at me for not being expert in such matters, as though I had been born a huge ungainly boy. So when it comes to fishing or riding or falconry, I’ll not let them pass me.”
There was just a fascinating touch of Scotch brogue to Di’s speech. Ruth thought she was the loveliest creature she had ever seen, with the clear colour shining in her cheeks, her clustering curls, her flaming sun-brown eyes and graceful, slender body.
“ROB ROY IS FRAE THE HIELANDS COME, DOWN TO THE LOWLAND BORDER”