It was a beautiful clear evening as they all of them—the fishing having been given up for the day—walked away through the meadows, and up into the road, and so on to the little hamlet; the western sky was shining in silver-gray and lemon and saffron; and there was a soft sweet feeling almost as of summer in the air, though the year was yet young. They had got six fish all told; that is to say, Mr. Hodson's boat had got one more in the afternoon; while Miss Carry had managed to pick up a small thing of eight pounds or so just as they were leaving off. The fact was, they did not care to prosecute the fishing till the last moment; for there was to be a little kind of a dinner-celebration that evening; and no doubt some of them wanted to make themselves as smart as possible—though the possibilities, as a rule, don't go very far in the case of a fishing-party in a Highland inn—all to pay due honour to the bride.
And surely if ever Meenie could lay claim to the title of Rose-Meenie it was on this evening when she came among these stranger folk—who were aware of her story, if not a word was said or hinted of it—and found all the women be-petting her. And Mrs. Douglas was there, radiant in silk and ribbons, if somewhat austere in manner; and the big good-natured Doctor was there, full to overflowing with jests and quips and occult Scotch stories; and Mr. and Mrs. Murray had done their very best for the decoration of the dining-room—though Sutherlandshire in April is far from being Florida. And perhaps, too, Miss Carry was a little paid out when she saw the perfectly servile adulation which Mr. J. C. Huysen (who had a sensitive heart, according to the young men of the N. Y. Sun) laid at the feet of the pretty young bride; though Mr. Hodson rather interfered with that, claiming Mrs. Strang as his own. Of course, Miss Kerfoot was rather down-hearted, because of the absence of her Tom and his banjo; but Ronald had promised her she should kill a salmon on the morrow; and that comforted her a little. Mrs. Lalor had recovered, and was chiefly an amused spectator; there was a good deal of human nature about; and she had eyes.
Altogether it was a pleasant enough evening; for, although the Americans and the Scotch are the two nations out of all the world that are the most madly given to after-dinner speech-making, nothing of the kind was attempted: Mr. Hodson merely raised his glass and gave 'The Bride!' and Ronald said a few manly and sensible words in reply. Even Mrs. Douglas so far forgot the majesty of Glengask and Orosay as to become quite complaisant; perhaps she reflected that it was, after all, chiefly through the kindness of these people that her daughter and her daughter's husband had been placed in a comfortable and assured position.
Ronald and Meenie had scarcely had time as yet to cease from being lovers; and so it was that on this same night he presented her with two or three more of those rhymes that sometimes he still wrote about her when the fancy seized him. In fact, he had written these verses as he sate on the deck of the big screw-steamer, when she was slowly steaming up the Raasay Sound.
O what's the sweetest thing there is
In all the wide, wide world?—
A rose that hides its deepest scent
In the petals closely curled?
Of the honey that's in the clover;
Or the lark's song in the morn;