“Well?” she said maliciously, without a smile; “and where are we to get the food you so nicely spoke of?”
He stood stupefied, and so dolorous a spectacle that she could not but laugh.
“You have got none at all, but imagined our feast—as usual,” she said, unfolding her bundle. “It was well I did not depend on your forethought, Gilian,” and she took a flask of milk and some bread from within. He was as much vexed at the spoiling of his illusion about the contents of the bundle as at the discovery of his thoughtlessness. What he had been so fervently caressing against his side had been no more romantic than bread and cheese and some more substantial augmentation for the poor table of the old woman they were going to meet!
The side of the loch bristled with dry heather roots; he plucked them and placed them on the side of a boulder beside Nan, and set fire to them, and soon a cheerful blaze competed with the tardy morning chill. They sat beside it singularly uplifted by this domestic hearth among the wilds; he felt himself a sort of householder, and to share as he did the fare of the girl was a huge delight. Her single cup passed between them; at first he was shy to touch at all the object her lips had kissed; he showed the feeling in his face, and she laughed again.
He joined in the merriment, quite comprehending. Next time the cup came his way he boldly turned it about so that where last she had sipped came to his lips, and there he lingered—just a shade too long for the look of the thing. What at first she but blushed and smiled at, she frowned upon at last with a sparkle of the eye her Uncle Jamie used to call in the Gaelic the torch of temper. Gilian missed it; that touch of his lip upon her cup had recalled the warmth of her hand upon the flowers he had gathered when she had let them fall in the Duke’s garden, but this was closer and more stirring. As he knelt on the heather he felt himself a worshipper of ancient days, and her the goddess of long-lost times. An uplifting was in his eyes; it would have been great and beautiful to any one that could have understood, but her it only vexed. When he handed back the cup she tossed it from her. It broke—sad omen!—on their first hearthstone. “That’ll do,” said she shortly, “it’s time we were going.” And she gathered hastily the remains of their breakfast and made for a departure.
He surveyed her dubiously, wondering why she so abruptly checked the advances he could swear she had challenged.
“I am sorry I vexed you,” he stammered. She brought down her brows questioningly. There was something pleasant and tempting though queenlike and severe in her straightened figure standing over him curved and strong and full, her screen fallen to her waist, a strand of her hair blown about her cheek by a saucy wind.
“Vexed?” she queried, and then smiled indifferent. “What would I be vexed at? We are finished, are we not? Must we be burdening ourselves unnecessarily going on a road you neither know the length or nature of?”
And without a word more they proceeded towards the shealing that was to be the end of their adventure.