Her husband was busy with a whole lot of plans all stretched out before him, and with a pipe which he had some difficulty in keeping alight. He did not even turn around as he answered. “You have your own way always. But you can’t expect to have mine also, you know.”
“Do you remember,” she said, slowly, “anything your friend Sheila told you about your rudeness to people? I wish, Edward, you would leave those ragged children and their school-houses for three minutes. Do! I so much want to see some places when we go to Scotland, for who knows when we may be there again? I have set my heart on the Braes of Yarrow. And Loch Awe by moonlight. And the Pass of Glencoe—”
“My dear child,” he said at last, turning around in his chair, “how can we go to those places? Sheila says Oban on the fifteenth.”
“But what Sheila says isn’t an Act of Parliament,” said the young American lady, plaintively and patiently. “Why should you regulate all your movements by her? You are always looking to the North: you are like the spires of the churches that are said to be always telling us that Heaven is close by the Pole Star.”
“The information is inaccurate, my dear,” Ingram said, looking at his pipe, “for the spires of the churches on the other side of the world point the other way. However, that does not matter. How do you propose to go rampaging all over Scotland, and still be at Oban on the fifteenth?”
“Telegraph to Mr. and Mrs. Lavender to come on to Edinburgh, and leave the trip to Lewis until we have seen those places. For, once we have got to that wild island, who knows when we shall return? Now, do, like a good boy. You know this new house of theirs will be all the drier in a month’s time. And their yacht will be all the more ship-shape. And both Sheila and her husband will be the better for coming down among civilized folks for a week’s time—especially just now, when numbers of their friends must be in the Highlands; and, of course, you get better attention at the hotels when the season is going on, and they have every preparation made; and I am told the heather and fern on the hills look very fine in August; and I am sure Mr. and. Mrs. Lavender will enjoy it very much if we get a carriage somewhere and leave the railways altogether, and drive by ourselves all through the prettiest districts.”
She wished to see the effect of her eloquence on him. It was peculiar. He put his pipe down and gravely repeated these lines, with which she was abundantly familiar:
“Sez vather to I, ‘Jack, rin arter him, du!’
Sez I to vather, ‘I’m darned if I du!’ ”
“You won’t?” she said.
“The proposal comes too late. How can you expect Sheila to leave her new house, and that boy of hers, that occupies three-fourths of her letters, just at this time. I think it was very kind of her, mind you, to come away down to Oban to meet us; and Lavender, too, is giving up the time out of the best working season of the year. Bless you! you will see far more beautiful things as we go from Oban to Lewis than any you have mentioned. For we shall probably cut down by Scarba and Jura before going up to Skye; and then you will see the coast that you admired so much in Lavender’s pictures.”