But before he could say more Lizzie was by his side. 'Come to my room, Donald,' she pleaded; and as he looked at the beautiful girl the young laird's wrath vanished as quickly as it had come. 'Come to my room for an hour until I draw a fair picture of you to hang in my bower. Ye shall have ten guineas if you will but come.'
'Your golden guineas I will not have!' cried Donald quickly. 'I have plenty of cows in the Highlands, and they are all my own. Come with me, Lizzie, and we will feed on curds and whey, and thou shalt have a bonnie blue plaid with red and green strips. Come with me, Lizzie Lindsay; we will herd the wee lambs together.'
Yet, though Lizzie loved young Donald MacDonald, she still hesitated to leave her kind parents and her beautiful home.
She sat in her bower and she said to her maid, 'Helen, what shall I do, for my heart is in the Highlands with Donald?'
Then the maid, who was wellnigh as beautiful as her mistress, cried, 'Though I were a princess and sat upon a throne, yet would I leave all to go with young Donald MacDonald.'
'O Helen!' cried Lizzie, 'would ye leave your chests full of jewels and silk gowns, and would ye leave your father and mother, and all your friends to go away with a Highland laddie who wears nought but a homespun kilt?'
But before her maid could answer her, Lizzie had sprung from her chair, saying, 'Yet I think he must be a wizard, and have enchanted me, for, come good or come ill, I must e'en go to the Highlands.'
Then early one morning Lizzie tied up her silk robes in a bundle and clad herself in one of Helen's plain gowns. With her bundle over her arm, Lizzie Lindsay was off to the Highlands with Donald MacDonald.
Donald's heart was glad as he left the fair city of Edinburgh behind him, Lizzie by his side. He had so much to tell his beautiful bride, so much, too, to show her, that at first the road seemed neither rough nor long.
But as the hours passed the way grew rougher, the hills steeper, and Lizzie's strength began to fail. Her shoes, too, which were not made for such rough journeys, were soon so worn that her feet grew hot and blistered.