“We might say,” went on Billie, “that the only Presbyterian preacher in West Haven is, to speak plainly, fairly dull.”
“Oh, my dear child, never confess a thing like that to your Cousin Annie Campbell. It is just possible she might consider it wicked to be anything else but dull.”
“Are we going to the Castle now?” demanded Mary Price, running up breathlessly.
“We are so,” answered Billie. “We are on the way and Cousin Helen’s going to walk because she loves every inch of Edinburgh soil.”
And walk they did up the steep hill, and Miss Helen never once made her usual complaint:
“My dears, I’m afraid I’m getting to be an old woman.”
At the top they paused to look at the view,—and there is hardly a more beautiful one in all the world: first the irregular roofs of the Old Town, once the center of fashion in Edinburgh; then a sheer drop into the New Town, gay and airy and highly picturesque, diversified with its terraced gardens, its spires and steeples; and farther on still, the sea, shimmering blue and dotted with white sails.
Then they crossed the drawbridge over the ancient moat and passed under a portcullis. Here Mary paused and burst out with:
“‘What, warder, ho! Let the portcullis fall!
The steed along the drawbridge flies
Just as it trembles on the rise;
Not lighter does a swallow skim
Along the smooth lake’s level brim.’”
The girls giggled freely over this exhibition of Mary’s enthusiasm and an old gentleman who happened to be entering the castle at the same time smiled with great amusement, and, lifting his hat, said to Miss Campbell: