'And then I have him all to myself, without any tiresome boys,' she would say to her mother. 'It is just like another honeymoon.'
Geraldine's one grievance was that she was not strong enough to share her husband's excursions. She had to stay with her mother and Michael when he and Audrey and Dr. Ross took one of their long scrambling or fishing expeditions. Geraldine used to manifest a wifely impatience on these occasions that was very pretty and becoming; and she and Michael, who seemed to share her feelings, would stroll to the little bridge of an evening to meet the returning party. Somehow Michael was always the first to see them and to raise the friendly halloo, that generally sent the small black cattle scampering down the croft.
'See the conquering hero comes!' Mr. Harcourt would respond, opening his rush basket to display the silvery trout. Dr. Ross's pockets would be full of mosses and specimens and fragments of rock, and Audrey brought up the rear with both hands laden with wild-flowers and grasses.
'Have you been dull, my darling?' Mr. Harcourt would say as Geraldine walked beside him. She seemed to have eyes and ears for no one else—and was that any wonder, when he had been absent from her since early morning? 'We have had a grand day, Jerry; we have tramped I do not know how many miles—Dr. Ross says fifteen; we have been arguing about it all the way home. I am as hungry as a hunter. I feel like Esau—a bowl of red lentils would not have a chance with me. I always had a sneaking sort of liking for Esau. What have you got for supper, little woman?'
'Salmon-steaks and broiled fowl,' was Geraldine's answer—'your favourite dishes, Percy. I am so glad you are hungry.'
'Faith, that I am; the Trojan heroes were nothing to me! I will have a wash first, and get off these boots—should you know them for boots?—and then you shall see, my dear.'
And it may be doubted whether those two ever enjoyed a meal more than those salmon-steaks and broiled fowl that Jean Scott first cooked and then carried in bare-armed, setting down the dishes with a triumphant bang on the small rickety table.
'Now we will have a drop of the cratur and a pipe,' Mr. Harcourt would say. 'Wrap yourself in my rug, and we will sit in the porch, for really this cabin stifles me after the moors. What have you and your mother been talking about? Let me have the whole budget, Jerry.'
Was there a happier woman in the world than Geraldine, nestled under her husband's plaid, in the big roomy porch, and looking out at the starlight? Even practical, prosaic people have their moments of poetry, when the inner meaning of things seems suddenly revealed to them, when their outer self drops off and their vision is purged and purified; and Geraldine, listening to the tinkling beck below, and inhaling the cool fragrance of the Scotch twilight, creeps nearer to her husband and leans against his sheltering arm. What does it matter what they talked about? Mr. Harcourt had not yet forgotten the lover in the husband; perhaps he, too, felt how sweet was this dual solitude after his busy labours, and owned in manly fashion his sense of his many blessings.
'How happy those two are!' Audrey once said, a little thoughtfully.