“To sing in the ale-house—a poor schooling, my dear!”
“I never before saw the jollity of living.”
“It’s no flattery to one Ealasaid; has he said aught of the seriousness of death?”
Alan hummed the end of a verse and then laughed slyly.
“Lass,” said he, “does it make much differ that he thinks you the handsomest girl in the parish?”
“I would sooner you yourself thought me the plainest, and yet had some pleasure in my company.”
“Yesterday (on a glass), he said your eyes were the fullest, your hair the yellowest, your step the lightest, your face the sweetest in all real Argyll.”
“Then he’s the man who should be doing your courting,” said the girl, with a bitterness; and she went home sore-hearted.
The days passed on birds’ feathers; the brackens coarsened in the gloomy places of the forest; the young of bird and beast lost themselves in the tangled richness of the field and wood. No rains came for many days, and the sun, a gallant horseman, rode from hill to hill, feasting his eye on the glens he saw too seldom.
In those hours the winds dozed upon the slimmest stem of heather; the burns, that for ordinary tear down our braes, bragging loud to the lip, hung back in friendly hollows under saugh-branch, rowan, and darach leaf; “but a little sleep,” said they—“a little sleep, that we may finish a dream we woke in the middle of,” and the grasshopper’s chirrup drowned their prayer.