“Though Davie says she carried Maysie every step of the way,” said Robert to his friend. “Man! John! It might be Diana herself!”
But John said nothing, and Robin had no time for more, for the bairns had descried him and his bag, and were down on him, as he said, like a pack of hungry wolves.
So John shook hands with the mistress, “in a dazed-like way,” she said afterward, and at the first moment had scarce a word for Marjorie, who greeted him with delight.
“John, this is my Allie,” said she, laying her hand on her friend’s glowing cheek, “and, Allie, this is Mrs Beaton’s John, ye ken.”
Allie glanced round at the new-comer, but she was too busy gathering back the wisp of hair that the wind was blowing about her face to see the hand which he held out to her, and the smile had gone quite out of her eyes when she raised them to his face.
“They minded me o’ Crummie’s een,” John told his mother long afterward.
The schoolmistress sat down upon a stone, thankful that her labours were over, and that the guiding home of the bairns had fallen into stronger hands than hers. And as she watched the struggle for the booty which came tumbling out of the bag, she was saying to herself:
“I hae heard it said o’ John Beaton that he never, a’ his days, looket twice in the face o’ a bonny lass as gin there were onything to be seen in it mair than ordinar. But I doot, after this day, that can never be said o’ him again. His time is come or I’m mista’en,” added she with grim satisfaction. “Noo we’ll see what’s in him.”
“And now, Maysie,” said Robin, coming back when the “battle of the baps” was over, “I’m to have the charge o’ you all the way home, my mother said. Allie has had enough o’ ye by this time. And we have Peter Gilchrist’s cart, full o’ clean straw, where ye can sit like a wee queen among her courtiers. So come awa’, my bonny May.”
But Allison had something to say to that proposal.