“I never heard so much about love in English all my life,” said Charles, “though it's common enough, and quite respectable in Gaelic. Do you—do you love myself?”
“Course I do!” said Bud, cuddling Footles. “Then,” said he, firmly, “the sooner I sign on with Kate the better, for you're a dangerous gyurl.”
So they went down the road together, planning ways of early foregatherings with Kate, and you may be sure Bud's way was cunningest.
CHAPTER XXII
WHEN Kate that afternoon was told her hour was come, and that to-morrow she must meet her destined mariner, she fell into a chair, threw her apron over her head, and cried and laughed horribly turn about—the victim of hysteria that was half from fear and half from a bliss too deep and unexpected.
“Mercy on me!” she exclaimed. “Now he'll find out everything, and what a stupid one I am. All my education's clean gone out of my head; I'm sure I couldn't spell an article. I canna even mind the ninth commandment, let alone the Reasons Annexed, and as for grammar, whether it's 'Give the book to Bud and me,' or 'Give the book to Bud and I,' is more than I could tell you if my very life depended on it. Oh, Lennox, now we're going to catch it! Are you certain sure he said to-morrow?”
Bud gazed at her disdainfully and stamped her foot. “Stop that, Kate MacNeill!” she commanded. “You mustn't act so silly. He's as skeered of you as you can be of him. He'd have been here Friday before the morning milk if he didn't think you'd be the sort to back him into a corner and ask him questions about ancient Greece and Rome. Seems to me love makes some folk idiotic; land's sake! I'm mighty glad it always leaves me calm as a plate of pumpkin-pie.”
“Is—is—he looking tremendously genteel and wellput-on?” asked the maid of Colonsay, with anxious lines on her forehead. “Is he—is he as nice as I said he was?”