“The charge of him!” said his wife in high indignation, “and her that has, maybe, twisted her ankle, or broken her bonnie airm, the darlin’, and a’ the fault of that ill-willy beast. And it’s us that has the chairge of her.”
This argument silenced Dougal for the moment, but he still continued to think quite as much of Rory as of the young lady, whichever of the two was responsible for the trouble which had occurred. When the boy came back to report that there was nothing to be found at the old brig but great marks on the ruin, as if somebody had “slithered down,” branches torn away, and the herbage crushed at the bottom, the alarm in the house rose high. And Dougal had fixed his cap firmly on the top of his head, as a man prepared for any emergency, and taken his staff in his hand to take the short cut across the moor, and find out for himself what the catastrophe had been, when a shout from Sandy on the top of the bank, and Beenie at the window, stopped further proceedings. There was Lily, pale, but smiling, in the gig from the inn, and Rory, tossing his red head, very indignant at the undignified position in which he found himself, tied to that shabby equipage. “The puir beast, just nickering with joy at the sight of home, but red with rage to be trailed at the tail of an inn geeg,” Dougal said, hurrying to loose the rope and lead the sufferer in. He was not without concern for Lily, but she was evidently none the worse, and he asked no more.
“I have had such an adventure,” she said, as soon as she was within hearing, “but I am not hurt, and nothing has happened to me. Such an adventure! What do you think, Beenie? A gentleman climbed up the old brig while we were there, and slipped and fell; and when I ran to see, who should it be but Mr. Lumsden, Ronald Lumsden, whom we used to see so much in Edinburgh.” Here Lily’s countenance bloomed so suddenly red out of her paleness that Katrin had a shock of understanding, and saw it all in a moment, if not more than there was to see. “And he had sprained his ankle,” Lily said, a paleness following the flush; “he couldn’t move. You may fancy what a state we were in.”
“Eh,” said Katrin, with her eyes fixed on Lily’s face, “what a good thing Miss Eelen was with you, for she kens as much about that sort o’ thing as the doctor himsel’.”
“I got him on the pony at last,” said Lily, “and we bound up his foot, and then we took him to the Manse. It was the nearest, and the doctor just at their door. But, oh, what a race I had with the pony, leading him, and sometimes he led me till I had to run; and I put my foot through my skirt, see? We mended it up a little at the Manse, and drew it out of the gathers. But look here: a job for you, Beenie. And my hair came down about my shoulders, and if you had seen the figure I was, running along the road——”
“But Miss Eelen with ye made a’ right,” said Katrin. “Ah, what a blessing that Miss Eelen was with ye.”
Lily was getting out of the gig, from the high seat of which she had hastened to make her first explanations. It was not an easy thing getting out of a high gig in those days, and “the geeg from the inn” was, naturally, without any of the latest improvements. She had to turn her back to the spectators as she clambered down, and if her laugh sounded a little unsteady, that was quite natural. “She is, indeed, as good as the doctor,” she said; “if you had seen how she cut open the boot and made him comfortable! And Rory behaved very well, too,” she said. “I spoke to him in his ear as you do, Dougal. I said: ‘Rory, Rory, my bonnie man, go canny to-day; you can throw me to-morrow, if you like, an I’ll never mind, but, oh, go canny to-day.’ And you did, Rory, you dear little fellow, and dragged me, with my hair flying like a wild creature, along the road,” she added, with a laugh, taking the rough and tossing head into her hands, and aiming a kiss at Rory’s shaggy forehead. But the pony was not used to such dainties and tossed himself out of her hands.
“You’re awfu’ tired, Miss Lily, though you’re putting so good a face upon it, and awfu’ shaken with the excitement, and a’ that. And to think o’ you being the one to find him—just the right person, the one that knew him—and to think of him being here, Maister Lumsden, touring or shooting or something, I suppose.”
Beenie’s speech ended spasmodically in a fierce grip of the arm with which Lily checked her as she went upstairs.
“What need have you,” said the young lady in an angry whisper, “to burden your mind with lies? Say I have to do it, and, oh, I hate it! but you have no need. Hold your tongue and keep your conscience free.”