"Ay, it's a good thing to feel nervous about beginning," says the Laird, as the long sweep of the four oars brings us nearer and nearer to the Iona shores. "I have often heard Tom Galbraith say that to the younger men. He says if a young man is over confident, he'll come to nothing. But there was a good one I once heard Galbraith tell about a young man that was pentin at Tarbert—that's Tarbert on Loch Fyne, Miss Avon. Ay, well, he was pentin away, and he was putting in the young lass of the house as a fisher-lass; and he asked her if she could not get a creel to strap on her back, as a background for her head, ye know. Well, says she——"
Here the fierce humour of the story began to bubble up in the Laird's blue-grey eyes. We were all half laughing already. It was impossible to resist the glow of delight on the Laird's face.
"Says she—just as pat as ninepence—says she, 'it's your ain head that wants a creel!'"
The explosion was inevitable. The roar of laughter at this good one was so infectious that a subdued smile played over the rugged features of John of Skye. "It's your ain head that wants a creel:" the Laird laughed, and laughed again, until the last desperately suppressed sounds were something like kee! kee! kee! Even Mary Avon pretended to understand.
"There was a real good one," says he, obviously overjoyed to have so appreciative an audience, "that I mind of reading in the Dean's Reminiscences. It was about an old leddy in Edinburgh who met in a shop a young officer she had seen before. He was a tall young man, and she eyed him from head to heel, and says she—ha! ha!—says she, 'Od, ye're a lang lad: God gie ye grace.' Dry—very dry—wasn't it? There was real humour in that—a pawky humour that people in the South cannot understand at all. 'Od', says she, 'ye're a lang lad: God grant ye grace.' There was a great dale of character in that."
We were sure of it; but still we preferred the Laird's stories about Homesh. We invariably liked best the stories at which the Laird laughed most—whether we quite understood their pawky humour or not.
"Dr. Sutherland has a great many stories about the Highlanders," says Miss Avon timidly; "they are very amusing."
"As far as I have observed," remarked the Laird—for how could he relish the notion of having a rival anecdote-monger on board?—"as far as I have observed, the Highland character is entirely without humour. Ay, I have heard Tom Galbraith say that very often, and he has been everywhere in the Highlands."
"Well, then," says Mary Avon, with a quick warmth of indignation in her face—how rapidly those soft dark eyes could change their expression!—"I hope Mr. Galbraith knows more about painting than he knows about the Highlanders! I thought that anybody who knows anything knows that the Celtic nature is full of imagination, and humour, and pathos, and poetry; and the Saxon—the Saxon!—it is his business to plod over ploughed fields, and be as dull and commonplace as the other animals he sees there!"
Gracious goodness!—here was a tempest! The Laird was speechless; for, indeed, at this moment we bumped against the sacred shores—that is to say, the landing-slip—of Iona; and had to scramble on to the big stones. Then we walked up and past the cottages, and through the potato-field, and past the white inn, and so to the hallowed shrine and its graves of the kings. We spent the whole of the afternoon there.