The young lady with inimitable grace bowed her queenly head to each of them in turn. The men slipped their swords quietly back into their scabbards.
“I give you good welcome to Dunvegan,” said the girl. “I regret that I do not speak fair the English.”
“Indeed, my lady,” rejoined the susceptible king, “it is the most charming English I ever heard.”
The fair stranger laughed in low and most melodious cadence, like a distant cathedral’s chime falling on the evening air.
“I am thinking you will be flattering me,” she said, “but I know my English is not good, for there are few in these parts that I can speak to in it.”
“I shall be delighted to be your teacher,” replied the king with his most courteous intonation. He knew from experience that any offer of tutorship from him had always proved exceedingly acceptable to the more dainty sex, and this knowledge gave him unbounded confidence while it augmented his natural self-esteem.
“It is perhaps that you already speak the Gaelic?” suggested the young woman.
“Alas! no madam. But I should be overjoyed to learn and there, it may be, you will accept me in the part of pupil. You will find me a devoted and most obedient scholar. I am in a way what you might call a poet, and I am told on every hand that Gaelic is the proper medium for that art.”
A puzzled expression troubled the face of the girl as she endeavoured to follow the communication addressed to her, but MacDonald sprang somewhat eagerly to the rescue, and delivered a long harangue in her native language. Her delight was instant, the cloud on her brow disappearing as if by magic under the genial influence of the accustomed converse. The king’s physiognomy also underwent a change but the transformation was not so pleasing as that which had illumined the countenance of the girl. His majesty distinctly scowled at the intrepid subject who had so impetuously intervened, but the pair paid slight attention to him, conversing amiably together, much to their mutual pleasure.