“Chiefly Billie—” put in Nancy.
“Yes, Billie, especially, I should have been this morning the most wretched about-to-be-bride that ever—”
She broke off suddenly and screened her face with the newspaper.
“Father and Ebenezer passed by the door just then,” she whispered. “Oh, what shall I do? I’m so afraid of bringing trouble on you, Miss Campbell. Perhaps I’d better give up. There’s no use trying—” the poor girl began to sob miserably.
Now, there was a decidedly martial strain in the Campbell family which had produced soldiers and fighting men in war and politics for three generations in America and a dozen in Scotland, and two members of that illustrious race at that moment began to hear the pibroch of the clan summoning them to battle. Two of the Campbell children exchanged glances of stern Campbell determination. Two descendants of Sir Roderick Campbell, illustrious scion of a fighting race, bore suddenly a strong resemblance to his unflinching countenance as depicted in an old portrait in Miss Campbell’s dining room.
Miss Campbell rose from the table. There was a dangerous light in her usually gentle eyes and she held her head well up.
“Boom, boom!” sounded the call to battle in her ears. The bagpipes of her ancestors were playing a wild strain. Down through the ages and across thousands of miles of land and water she could hear that martial air:
“The Campbells are coming, O-ho! O-ho!
The Campbells are coming, O-ho! O-ho!”
Then up rose the younger Campbell all booted and kilted for the fray.
“Evelyn,” said the elder Campbell quietly, “are you a girl of any spirit and courage at all?”