"Is he then not of your people who are slow to ask—favours?" said Helen. "I think so, yes. Do you remember I ride with him a little way from Scaurdale? There is a moon, and the hills ver' clear and we gallop."
"I am minding," said Margaret.
"'It is Romance,' I say to him, and he will be carrying me away off to the hills, and he is laughing.
"'An unwilling captive,' he says.
"'Not ver' unwilling,' I say, for he looked ver' gallant.
"'But a willing captive, she would kiss me,' said Bryde, your cousin, and then I make no movement of my head, but my eyes are looking at his laughing down at me—asking favours, ma belle, and still I not move, and he throw back his head (comme ça), and say—
"'I do not beg—even kisses,' very proudly he looks, ma belle, and his blue eyes laughing. . . ."
"I am remembering that the charm was working, Helen," said Margaret, in a voice like the north wind for coldness.
"Ah oui," cried Helen, "backwards it work—I kiss him la la," and she laughed like silver bells a-tinkle.
Now that was a daftlike tale to be telling, but Margaret was for ever cleaving me with Helen after that. "She is beautiful," she would tell me, "and merry and a great lady, and I think any man will be loving her," but there were many nights when Margaret lay wide-eyed, for all that she drove Bryde from her with jest and laughter. But I think it was well that she never kent of the meeting of Bryde and Helen Stockdale at the ford in the burn yonder at the foot of the Urie.