Still, one week-day is very like another at waking time. My mental vision, never pellucid, is in its most opaque condition in the early grey of the morning; and at Oxford, I remember, I found it necessary to instruct my scout to rouse me from slumber in some such fashion as this: "Eight o'clock on Thursday mornin', sir!" (as if I had slept since Monday at least), or "'Alf-past nine, slight rain, and a Toosday, sir!"
However, no one was ever yet needed to inform me that it was Sunday morning. This is perhaps natural enough in town, where the silence of the streets and the sound of bells proclaim the day; but why the same phenomenon should occur in the middle of a Highland moor, where every day is one glorious open-air Sabbath, passes my comprehension.
I discussed the problem after breakfast as I sat and smoked my pipe in the heathery garden of Strathmyrtle, a shooting-lodge at which we were being hospitably entertained by Kitty's uncle, Sir John Rubislaw, a retired Admiral of the Fleet, whose forty years' official connection with Britannia's realm betrayed itself in a nautical roll, syncopated by gout, and what I may describe as a hurricane-deck voice. My three companions in the debate were my host, Master Gerald, and another guest in the house, one Dermott, an officer in a Highland regiment.
The Admiral ascribed my Sabbath intuition to the working of some inward and automatic monitor; while Dermott, among whose many sterling qualities delicate fancy was not included, put it down to the smell of some special dish indigenous to Sunday breakfast. My brother-in-law's contribution to the debate was an unseemly and irreverent parallel between Saturday night potations and Sunday morning "heads."
To us entered Dolly and Phillis.
Our hostess, together with Kitty and the other girl of the party—an American young lady of considerable personal attractions—had driven off to church in what is locally called a "machine." The duties of escort had been voluntarily undertaken by an undergraduate named Standish, who was the latest recruit to the American young lady's army of worshippers. The rest of us had stayed at home—the Admiral because he not infrequently did so; I because I was expecting Robin back by the "machine" (which was to pick him up at a wayside station, where he had been sitting on his portmanteau ever since six o'clock that morning, having been dropped there by the night mail from London), and was anticipating two or three hours' solid work with him; Gerald because he had succeeded in evading his eldest sister's eye during the search for church recruits; Dolly to look after Phillis; and Captain Dermott for reasons not unconnected with Dolly.
It was Phillis's birthday, but out of consideration for Scottish views on Sabbath observance the festivities in connection with that anniversary had been postponed until the morrow. However, this did not prevent my daughter from demanding (and obtaining) various special privileges of an unofficial character this hot Sunday morning. Consequently a spiritually willing but carnally incompetent band, consisting of one jovial but arthritic baronet, one docile but self-conscious warrior, one indulgent but overheated parent, and Dolly—Gerald stood scornfully aloof—were compelled to devote the next two hours to a series of games, stage-plays, and allegories of an innocuous but exhausting description.
We began by joining hands and walking in a circle, solemnly chanting a ditty of the "I-saw-a-ship-a-sailing" variety, which culminated in the following verse—
"Then three times round went that gallant ship,
Then three times round went she;