Hastings went with the two other men to the inn, and there he laid siege to the heart of Mrs. MacFie, and the quality of his smile was such that her Scottish reserve melted beneath its warmth, like butter beneath the rays of the sun, and she promised to give him a bedroom: and if he would be requiring it, a sitting-room; but Hastings would not be requiring a sitting-room: he meant to sit elsewhere—and for the matter of that to sleep elsewhere—after the first night; but he did not say that.
The first day, what there was left of it, he spent quietly bearing all things with patience. He watched Pease tangling and disentangling fishing-tackle: watched Watkins reading a book on the Salmo salar. For Pease he evinced a great liking and for Watkins a profound pity, for he judged there was to be no untruth to which Watkins would not descend for the sake of a rhyme: whereas Pease was honesty itself, which combined with an almost childlike simplicity made him likable enough. That night Miles Hastings slept. The following morning he rose refreshed, if not quite a giant—and after all why not a giant, since there are more kinds of giants than one, if we are to believe the old story of the man who applied to the Manager of a Travelling Show for the advertised vacancy of giant? “But you’re not even a big man,” protested the manager; whereupon the man, drawing himself up, said proudly: “No, I am the smallest giant in the world!”
Miles might claim to be more than that. Pease respected him immensely for his tweeds and his tie: and Watkins envied him his inches.
After breakfast Miles started off for Glenbossie Lodge and nothing of beauty escaped him as he went. The clearness of the running river—too clear for a fisherman—was for him at the moment beautiful. The minutest flower that grew in the cranny of a rock filled him, on this wonderful morning, with delight; because everything in nature sang of Diana. All beauty was but a tribute to hers. He laughed as the sheep scuttled out of his path. The scent of the bog-myrtle rose like incense on the air: the sandy road with its heather-topped ruts was good going: the wide stretches of moor on either side of him invited him to climb the hills to which they gently led: the rocks scattered here and there in the heather challenged him to guess how they had come there. Great boulders they were that no man could move, certainly not the smallest giant in the world.
The curlew called to him: the gulls plainly enough told him to go away—the sky was theirs—not his: the sea and all that therein was—theirs, not his. A little child padded past him, too shy to answer his greeting; but not too shy to smile hers. The burns gurgling down from the hillside laughed at him—chuckled over jokes of their own, which jokes were hidden either deep down in “pots,” or by the heather that touched hands over the laughing waters.
Hastings knew what good jokes little trout can be, and if he had been younger they might have kept him,—even from Diana,—but now nothing could do that: everything bade him hurry, the golden-rod at the side of the road waved to him: the blue and pink scabious nodded: everything sympathized with him.
An old woman making hay, in a patch of a field, at the side of the road, came down to the low stone wall and greeted him in her soft native tongue; which greeting conveyed to him a wish for good luck in his wooing. She understood! Her smiling, sunken eyes held memories. It must have been years ago that she was wooed, yet she had not forgotten! Who could forget, if it had been among these hills, beside these burns, under this sky that he had loved? O Scotland! No wonder Shan’t addressed her letters to Uncle Marcus “Glenbossie, darlin’ Scotland.”
Arrived at the Lodge, Miles went up the pebbly path that led to the door, rang the bell—and waited.
Pillar came to the wide-open door. “Good-morning,” said Captain Hastings.
“Good-morning, sir,” said Pillar.