“Can you start now and march all night?” said I.
“I will do all that you can ask of me,” she said, “and never ask you why. I have been a bad, ungrateful girl to you; and do what you please with me now! And I think Miss Barbara Grant is the best lady in the world,” she added, “and I do not see what she would deny you for at all events.”
This was Greek and Hebrew to me; but I had other matters to consider, and the first of these was to get clear of that city on the Leyden road. It proved a cruel problem; and it may have been one or two at night ere we had solved it. Once beyond the houses, there was neither moon nor stars to guide us; only the whiteness of the way in the midst, and a blackness of an alley on both hands. The walking was besides made most extraordinary difficult by a plain black frost that fell suddenly in the small hours and turned that highway into one long slide.
“Well, Catriona,” said I, “here we are, like the king’s sons and the old wives’ daughters in your daft-like Highland tales. Soon we’ll be going over the ‘seven Bens, the seven glens, and the seven mountain moors’”—which was a common byword or overcome in those tales of hers that had stuck in my memory.
“Ah,” says she, “but here are no glens or mountains! Though I will never be denying but what the trees and some of the plain places hereabouts are very pretty. But our country is the best yet.”
“I wish we could say as much for our own folk,” says I, recalling Sprott and Sang, and perhaps James More himself.
“I will never complain of the country of my friend,” said she, and spoke it out with an accent so particular that I seemed to see the look upon her face.
I caught in my breath sharp and came near falling (for my pains) on the black ice.
“I do not know what you think, Catriona,” said I, when I was a little recovered, “but this has been the best day yet! I think shame to say it, when you have met in with such misfortunes and disfavours; but for me, it has been the best day yet.”