“Ye—yes,” said the maid.
“Seems to me it's not very encouraging to Charles, then.”
“Yes, but—but I wasn't running all my might,” said Kate.
CHAPTER XXIII
TA-RAN-TA-RA! Ta-ran-ta-ra!
The world is coming for Lennox Dyce, the greedy, greedy world, youth's first and worst beguiler, that promises so much, but at the best has only bubbles to give, which borrow for a moment the splendor of the sin, then burst in the hands that grasp them—the world that will have only our bravest and most clever bairns, and takes them all from us one by one. I have seen them go—scores of them, boys and girls, their foreheads high, and the sun on their faces, and never one came back. Now and then returned to the burgh, in the course of years, a man or woman who bore a well-known name and could recall old stories, but they were not the same, and even if they were not disillusioned, there was that in their flushed prosperity which ill made up for the bright young spirits quelled.
Ta-ran-ta-ra! Ta-ran-ta-ra!
Yes, the world is coming, sure enough—on black and yellow wheels, with a guard red-coated who bugles through the glen. It is coming behind black horses, with thundering hoofs and foam-flecked harness, between bare hills, by gurgling burms and lime-washed shepherd dwellings, or in the shadow of the woods that simply stand where they are placed by God and wait. It comes in a fur-collared coat—though it is autumn weather—and in a tall silk hat, and looks amused at the harmless country it has come to render discontent.