“Pray do!” exclaimed Mr. Knagg; and his eyeglasses flew off his nose, he frowned so hard.
“My love’s in Germanie—send him hame! send him hame! My love’s in Germanie—send him hame!” Jean only sang three verses. Elspeth never taught her the last two, and when the last notes full of longing had died away, she added cheerfully: “But he iss at home just now.”
“Who is?”
“My father. Nearly all my songs iss about father.”
“Really!” ejaculated Mr. Knagg, and blew his nose noisily. “So that’s Scotch?”
“All my songs iss Scottish. I promised Elspeth, and I will know them all some day. Goot-bye!” and Jean, settling Tammy more comfortably on her arm, prepared to depart. As she spoke she had lifted her face to be kissed, and Mr. Knagg kissed her.
“He iss a dull man,” said Jean confidentially to Colin; “but he was douce enough to me.”
The man in question sat in his favorite chair and read his Sunday newspaper upside down. It was thirty-five years since he had kissed a child!
Colin and Andrew were at school, father and mother had gone out in the dog-cart, taking Maighda with them for the run, Elspeth was ironing frocks, and Jean entertaining Tammy and all the dolls at tea on the lawn. Suddenly she threw back her head and listened—no one had such quick ears as Jean—the color rushed to her face, and she scampered across the grass, round by the side of the house, and out at the garden gate; bareheaded, with flying rosy feet, she raced to the end of the terrace, and as she ran the sound which so excited her grew louder. It was the pipes!
Would she find “the regiment,” she wondered? Had it come to show what Elspeth called “this wee stuck-up bit towney” what real John Hielandman were like? Jean pictured the frowning castle and windy Esplanade, the steep, stony street, flanked by tall grey houses, down which “the regiment” “in tartan plaid and philabeg” swept with swinging steps. That was the setting in which she knew her father’s men. How would they look in this trim Southern town? And would she dare to stop them to ask after her friends?