Then in the evening the dancing would be going on, with the pipers in their own place, three of them abreast, and piping until their faces would be shining with the joy of it. Och, the great joyousness of the dancing, with the lassies taking a good hold of their skirts and lifting them to be getting the bonny steps in, and the boys from the glens hooching with upthrown arm, now this and now that, and their shoes beating out the time as though the music and the dancing was in the very blood of them, and indeed so it was.
And there would be fiddlers too, and step-dancing, and singing and everything to be making merry the heart of a man.
Hugh and Helen would be leaving the dance at last, and there was a buzz of laughing, although nobody would be knowing where the pair of them were to be that night; and it was then that Margaret would be at her good-nights to Bryde, for they could not be having enough of each other all that day.
"It will be you and me next," said Bryde, "Margaret, my little darling," and she crept closer to him.
"Take me somewhere," said she, "where the folk will not be seeing."
And then, "I will have been mad to be doing this all this night," said she, and pulled his head down to her and kissed him. "Tell me, Bryde, oh, tell me."
"I am loving you," said he, and his eyes burning, "loving the grace and the beauty and the bravery in you," and he lifted her into his arm like a wean, and his face was bent to hers and her white arms round him. Her eyes were softly closed, and a little white smile on her face.
"For ever and ever, my great dark man," she whispered.
"Darling," said Bryde, "little darling, for ever and ever," and with a face all laughing and her eyes like stars she ran from him to her room.
And coming from her door—for he had followed her, laughing at her dainty finger raised in smiling command—coming from her closed door with her love about him like a cloud, there met him his cousin's wife, and he could hear the crying of the dancers below, and Hugh's voice forbidding pursuit.