"That girl!" cries her hostess angrily, as she jumps to her feet.
The door opens; and here is Mary Avon, with calm self-possession, making her way to a chair.
"I knew you wouldn't believe me," she says coolly, "if I did not come down. I tell you my foot is as well as may be; and Dot-and-carry-one will get down to the yacht in the morning as easily as any of you. And that last story about Homesh," she says to the Laird, with a smile in the soft black eyes that must have made his heart jump. "Really, sir, you must tell me the ending of that story; it was so stupid of me!"
"Shilpit" she may have been; but the Laird, for one, was beginning to believe that this girl had the courage and nerve of a dozen men.
CHAPTER III.
UNDER WAY.
The first eager glance out on this brilliant and beautiful morning; and behold! it is all a wonder of blue seas and blue skies that we find before us, with Lismore lying golden-green in the sunlight, and the great mountains of Mull and Morven shining with the pale etherial colours of the dawn. And what are the rhymes that are ringing through one's brain—the echo perchance of something heard far away among the islands—the islands that await our coming in the west?—
O land of red heather!
O land of wild weather,
And the cry of the waves, and the laugh of the breeze!