"With your leave," said he, "I will be on the road."
Margaret came over beside me and put her hand into mine.
"You're early, sir, you're early," cried Scaurdale; "it's asourying wi' the lasses ye will be at."
The mistress looked not so ill-pleased at that, but it seemed to me
Margaret's hand tightened in mine with a little tremble.
"I'm thinking, Scaurdale, we will be getting a pair of colours for
Bryde," said my uncle. "Would he not make a slashing light dragoon?"
At that Mistress Helen clapped her hands. "I think yes," said she, "but yes, certainly."
"I would be going to the sea," said Bryde, "like Angus McKinnon—the tall ships and the strange countries, the white sails in the moonlight, and the black cannon and the cutlasses," said he, and then with a sort of shame, "and all that," but his eyes were full of longing and his cheek flushed.
"Ah oui," cried Helen, "I am seeing all that, M'sieu."
And Hugh McBride looked glumly at Bryde as he left.
"I am forgetting," said Margaret, "I am wanting Bryde. Take me, Hamish," and her hand was pressing mine. But I thought to be teaching her a lesson, and sat still a little.