“My bonnie Lily, you’ll always do more for me, and better for me, than I deserve,” he cried. “Is that the postman for the first time coming up the road from the town?”
They went to the window to look out at this remarkable phenomenon, and there he kept her, pointing out already the break of the snow upon the side of the moor, revealing the little current of the burn, and something of the edge of the road, along which, wonderful sight! that solitary figure was making its way. “But it will not be passable, I think, till to-morrow for any wheeled thing, so we will make ourselves happy for another day,” Ronald said; and this was all the answer he gave her. He was very full of caresses, of fond speeches, and lover’s talk all day. He scarcely left an opening for any thing more serious. If Lily began again with her question, he always found some way of stopping her mouth. Perhaps she was not unwilling, in a natural shrinking from conflict, to have her mouth stopped. But there rose between them an uneasy sense of something to be explained, something to be unravelled, a desire on one side which was to encounter on the other resistance not to be overcome.
Ronald went out to Dougal after dinner and stood by him while he suppered the pony. “I think the roads will be clear to-morrow, Dougal,” he said.
“I wouldna wonder,” said Dougal. His opinion was that the lad from Edinburgh would just sorn on there forever eating Sir Robert’s good meat and would never more go away.
“Which do you think would be best? to lend me Rory and the little cart to take me in to Kinloch-Rugas, or to send for the geeg from the inn to catch the coach on the South Road at Inverlochers?”
“I could scarcely gie an opinion,” said Dougal. “A stoot gentleman o’ your age might maybe just as easy walk.”
When Dougal said “a stoot gentleman” he did not mean to imply that Ronald was corpulent, but that he was a strong fellow and wanted no pony to take him four miles.
“That’s true enough,” said Ronald; “but there’s my portmanteau, which is rather heavy to carry.”
“As grand as you——” Dougal began, but then he stopped and reflected that he was, so to speak, on his own doorstep (in the absence of Sir Robert), and that it was a betrayal of all the traditions of hospitality to be rude to a guest, especially to one who was about to take himself away. “Weel,” he added quickly, with a push to his bonnet, “I canna spare you Rory—the young leddy might be wanting a ride; but Sandy and the black powny will take in the bit box if ye’re sure that you’ve made up your mind—at last.”
“I dare say you thought I was never going to do that,” Ronald said, with a laugh.