'I am sure if she stays away,' the little Maggie said, 'it is not her own doing. Meenie wanted to come. It is very hard that everybody should be at the party and not Meenie.'
'Well, well, good-night, lass,' said he; for the young folk were choosing their partners again, and the pipes were wanted. Soon there was another reel going on, as fast and furious as before.
At the end of this reel—Meenie had not appeared, by the way, and Ronald concluded that she was not to be allowed to look on at the dancing—the yellow-haired Nelly came up to the top of the room, and addressed Mrs. Murray in the Gaelic; but as she finished up with the word quadrille, and as she directed one modest little glance towards Mr. Hodson, that amiable but astute onlooker naturally inferred that he was somehow concerned in this speech. Mrs. Murray laughed.
'Well, sir, the girls are asking if you would not like to have a dance too; and they could have a quadrille.'
'I've no cause to brag about my dancing,' he said good-humouredly, 'but if Miss Nelly will see me through, I dare say we'll manage somehow. Will you excuse my ignorance?'
Now the tall and slender Highland maid had not in any way bargained for this—it was merely friendliness that had prompted her proposal; but she could not well refuse; and soon one or two sets were formed; and a young lad called Munro, from Lairg, who had brought his fiddle with him for this great occasion, proceeded to tune up. The quadrille, when it came off, was performed with more of vigour than science; there was no ignominious shirking of steps—no idle and languid walking—but a thorough and resolute flinging about, as the somewhat bewildered Mr. Hodson speedily discovered. However, he did his part gallantly, and was now grown so gay that when, at the end of the dance, he inquired of the fair Nelly whether she would like to have any little refreshment, and when she mildly suggested a little water, and offered to go for it herself, he would hear of no such thing. No, no; he went and got some soda-water, and declared that it was much more wholesome with a little whisky in it; and had some himself also. Gay and gallant?—why, certainly. He threw off thirty years of his life; he forgot that this was the young person who would be waiting at table after his daughter Carry came hither: he would have danced another quadrille with her; and felt almost jealous when a young fellow came up to claim her for the Highland Schottische—thus sending him back to the society of Mrs. Murray. And it was not until he had sate down that he remembered he had suggested to his daughter the training of this pretty Highland girl for the position of maid and travelling companion. But what of that? If all men were born equal, so were women; and he declared to himself that any day he would rather converse with Nelly the pretty parlour-maid than (supposing him to have the chance) with Her Illustrious Highness the Princess of Pfalzgrafweiler-Gunzenhausen.
In the meantime Ronald, his pipes not being then needed, had wandered out into the cold night-air. There were some stars visible, but they shed no great light; the world lay black enough all around. He went idly and dreamily along the road—the sounds in the barn growing fainter and fainter—until he reached the plateau where his own cottage stood. There was no light in it anywhere; doubtless Maggie had at once gone to bed, as she had been bid. And then he wandered on again—walking a little more quietly—until he reached the doctor's house. Here all the lights were out but one; there was a red glow in that solitary window; and he knew that that was Meenie's room. Surely she could not be sitting up and listening?—even the skirl of the pipes could scarcely be heard so far; and her window was closed. Reading, perhaps? He knew so many of her favourites—'The Burial March of Dundee,' 'Jeannie Morrison,' 'Bonny Kilmeny,' 'Christabel,' the 'Hymn before Sunrise in the Valley of Chamounix,' and others of a similar noble or mystical or tender kind; and perhaps, after all, these were more in consonance with the gentle dignity and rose-sweetness of her mind and nature than the gambols of a lot of farm-lads and wenches? He walked on to the bridge, and sate down there for a while, in the dark and the silence; he could hear the Mudal Water rippling by, but could see nothing. And when he passed along the road again, the light in the small red-blinded window was gone; Meenie was away in the world of dreams and phantoms—and he wondered if the people there knew who this was who had come amongst them, with her wondering eyes and sweet ways.
He went back to the barn, and resumed his pipe-playing with all his wonted vigour—waking up the whole thing, as it were; but nothing could induce him to allow one or other of the lads to be his substitute, so that he might go and choose a partner for one of the reels. He would not dance; he said his business was to keep the merry-making going. And he and they did keep it going till between five and six in the morning, when all hands were piped for the singing of 'Auld Lang Syne:' and thereafter there was a general dispersal, candles going this way and that through the blackness like so many will-o'-the-wisps; and the last good-nights at length sank into silence—a silence as profound and hushed as that that lay over the unseen heights of Clebrig and the dark and still lake below.
CHAPTER IX.
ENTICEMENTS.