“You couldn’t have got a better,” Ingram said, sententiously, and interposing as if it was not within his wife’s province to form an opinion of any sort. “And where is your father, Sheila? In Borva?”
“Oh, no, he is here,” the girl said, with a smile. “But the truth is, he has driven away to see some gentlemen he knows, to ask if he can have some grouse for you. He should have been back by this time.”
“I would not hurry him, Sheila,” Ingram said, gravely. “He could not have gone on a more admirable errand. We must await his return with composure. In the meantime, Lavender, do make your fellows stop that man; he is taking away my wife’s trunk to some hotel or other.”
The business of getting the luggage on board the yacht was entrusted to a couple of men whom Lavender left on shore, whereupon the newly-arrived travelers put off in a little pinnace and were conveyed to the side of the handsome schooner. When they were on board an eager exploration followed; and if Sheila could only have undertaken to vouch for the smoothness of the water for the next month, Mrs. Ingram was ready to declare that at last she had discovered the most charming and beautiful and picturesque fashion of living known to civilized man. She was delighted with the little elegancies of the state-rooms; she was delighted with the paintings on the under skylights, which had been done by Lavender’s own hand; she was delighted with the whiteness of the decks and the height of the tapering spars; and she had no words for her admiration of the beautiful sweep of the bay, the striking ruins of the old castle at the point, the rugged hills rising behind the white houses, and out there in the West the noble panorama of mountain and island and sea.
“I am afraid, Mrs. Ingram,” Lavender said, “you will have cause to know Oban before we leave it. There is not a breath of wind to take us out of the bay.”
“I am content,” she said, “with a gracious calm.”
“But we must get you up to Borva, somehow. There it would not matter how long you were becalmed, for there is plenty to see about the island. But this is a trifle commonplace, you know.”
“I don’t think so at all. I am delighted with the place,” she said. “And so are you, Edward.”
Ingram laughed. He knew she was daring him to contradict her. He proposed he should go ashore and buy a few lines with which they might fish for young saithe or lythe over the side of the yacht, but this project was stopped by the appearance of the King of Borva, who bore triumphant proof of the success of his mission in a brace of grouse held up in each hand as a small boat brought him out to the yacht.
“And I was seeing Mr. Hutcheson,” Mackenzie said to Lavender, as he stepped on board, “and he is a ferry good-natured man whatever, and he says if there is no wind at all he will let one of his steamers take the yacht up to Loch Sunart, and if there is a breeze at all we will get it there.”