The two listeners cheered him on with bursts of delighted laughter, while at an unexpected clever turn, or apt stringing together of words, the Chieftain would clap his hands and caper with delight.
“Good! good!” he would cry. “Neat! neat!” while his twinkling eyes surveyed the boy with increasing respect. “Do you often improvise?” he asked, when the ballad came to an end, and when Ron replied truthfully enough in the negative, “Well, I have heard many fellows do it worse!” was his flattering comment.
Margot had expected more, and felt that more was deserved, for the ballad had been quite a brilliant effort to be rattled off on the spur of the moment, but she could only hope that, in conclave with his brother, the Chieftain might be more enthusiastic, and manage to impress upon that absent-minded genius that the boy was worthy of his notice and study.
In due time—a very short time, as it appeared—the cottage was reached owned by the “guid-wife,” who was ready to give—not sell—draughts of buttermilk to the passers-by. Margot was a little chary of the first taste, but the keen moorland air had done its work, and she too found it as nectar to the palate. The guid-wife “had no English,” but the two women conversed eloquently with the language of the eyes, concerning the sleeping baby in its cradle, and the toddling urchins around the door. Here in the solitude this brave woman of the people reared her family, made their garments, tended them when they were sick, cooked for them, baked for them, washed for them, mended for them, and kept the three-roomed cot as exquisitely clean as hands could make it. The girl who dusted the drawing-room and arranged a few vases of flowers as her duty in life, gazed at her with awe, and felt ashamed of her own idle existence!
The buttermilk quaffed, Mr Elgood led the way to a thick patch of heather some few hundred yards nearer home, came to a standstill, and, spreading his handkerchief under his head, lay down with great deliberation and crossed his arms in beatific content.
“Now, if you want to discover what comfort means, find a soft patch for yourselves, and take a nap before we start for home. No upholsterer on earth ever manufactured a mattress to equal a bed of heather. If you don’t want to sleep, kindly keep your distance, and enjoy yourselves with discretion, for if I’m awakened in the middle of my siesta, nothing short of murder will appease me!”
He shut his eyes even as he spoke, and composed himself with a sigh of content. Margot, nothing loath, took off her cap, and, spreading her cape over the bushes, nestled contentedly into its folds. Ron scorned the idea of sleep, but as he was curious to test the comforts of the heather, down he lay in his turn; and so soft, so springy, so eminently luxurious did the new bed appear, that he felt no desire to rise. Presently his eyes dropped, rose heavily once or twice, and rose no more. Margot’s head burrowed more deeply into her cape. Deep regular snores sounded from the bush where Mr Elgood reposed. All three were fast asleep!
The sun shone on them; the hum of a thousand insects rose from the grass; high in the air a lark trilled his triumphant song. It was rest indeed to sleep and dream in such surroundings!