"Well, I think I'll bear ye company," said the Troich Bheag Dhearg, with the heavily down-drawn mouth expressing something more than mere decision. "There's a few things I want to see to. And I havena been out to Lochgarra for some time."
CHAPTER VI.
HABET!
Mary went singing through the house: her step free and agile, her face radiant, her eyes shining with good-humour and the delight of life.
"Käthchen," she said, one morning, "the proofs of the photographs should come to-day, and if they turn out well I mean to have the whole of them enlarged, every one of them, to make a handsome series for Mrs. Armour. Don't you think they should be very interesting to those people away over there—'where wild Altama murmurs to their woe'? Woe, indeed! I wish we could import some of their woeful circumstances into this neighbourhood. Forty bushels of wheat to the acre: what do you say to that? A hundred and sixty acres of land for two pounds! I don't like to think of it, Käthchen: to tell you the truth, I just hate to hear Mr. Ross begin and talk about emigration: it all sounds so horribly reasonable, and practicable, and right. Sometimes I lie awake convincing myself that the very next day or the next again he will make his appearance with the announcement that he has decided to go back to his original intention; and then—then he will say good-bye to Lochgarra—he and half the people from about here—and be off to the Gilbert Plains or the Lake Dauphin District——"
"You need not be afraid," said Käthchen, quietly. "It is neither wheat-fields nor gold-fields that are likely to allure Mr. Ross. There's metal more attractive nearer home. By the way, Mamie," she continued, with a certain significance, "you remember there was a group taken on the banks of the Connan—and you and Mr. Ross are standing together. When you get the pictures enlarged, are you going to send any copies of that one to your friends in the south?"
"Why not?" said she, boldly.
"They may draw conclusions," said Kate Glendinning, looking at her.
"They are welcome to draw a cart-load of conclusions!" she retorted; but all the same she changed the subject quickly. "Do you know, Käthchen, it is quite wonderful how easily things go forward when Donald Ross is helping me. Look at the wood-carving class—started in a moment, almost; and that left-handed rascal turning out the cleverest of any of them. And then he is quite of a mind with me about corrugated iron——"
"You mean Mr. Ross, Mamie?" said Kate, demurely.