And the birds were singing in every bush
As at spring anew begun,
O Clebrig, what is it that makes you glad,
And whither is gone your frown?
Are you looking afar into the south,
The long, wide strath adown?
And see you that Meenie is coming back—
Love Meenie, from Glasgow town!
He laughed. Not yet was Love Meenie taken away from them all. And if in the unknown future the Stuarts of Glengask and Orosay were to carry her off and make a great lady of her, and take her to see strange places, and perhaps marry her to some noble person, at least in the meantime Ben Clebrig and Ben Loyal and the wide straths between knew that they still held in the mighty hollow of their hand this sweet flower of Sutherlandshire, and that the world and the skies and the woods and lakes seemed fairer because of her presence. And as regarded himself, and his relations with her? Well, what must be must. Only he hoped—and there was surely no great vanity nor self-love nor jealousy in so modest a hope—that the change of her manner towards him was due to the counsels of her mother rather than to anything he had unwittingly said or done. Rose Meenie—Love Meenie—he had called her in verses; but always he had been most respectful to herself; and he could not believe that she thought him capable of doing anything to offend her.
CHAPTER XIII.