"I should hope so," remarked Miss Avon.
Then the measured rattle of the oars: it wants hard pulling against this fiercely running tide; indeed, to cheat it in a measure, we have to keep working along the coast and across the mouth of Loch Swen.
"There was Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton,
And Mary Avon, and me"—
says the Laird, as a playful introduction to another piece of talking. "I have been asking myself once or twice whether I know any one in the whole kingdom of Scotland better than you."
"Than me, sir?" she says, with a start of surprise.
"Yes," he says, sententiously. "That is so. And I have had to answer myself in the naygative. It is wonderful how ye get to know a person on board a yacht. I just feel as if I had spent years and years with ye; so that there is not any one I know with whom I am better acquaint. When ye come to Denny-mains, I shall be quite disappointed if ye look surprised or strange to the place. I have got it into my head that ye must have lived there all your life. Will ye undertake to say," he continues, in the same airy manner, "that ye do not know the little winding path that goes up through the trees to the flag-staff—eh?"
"I'm afraid I don't remember it," she says, with a smile.
"Wait till ye see the sunsets ye can see from there!" he says, proudly. "We can see right across Glasgow to Tennants' Stalk; and in the afternoon the smoke is all turning red and brown with the sunset—many's and many's the time I have taken Tom Galbraith to the hill, and asked him whether they have finer sunsets at Naples or Venice. No, no; give me fire and smoke and meestery for a strong sunset. But just the best time of the year, as ye'll find out"—and here he looked in a kindly way at the girl—"where there is a bit wood near the house, is the spring-time. When ye see the primroses and the blue-bells about the roots of the trees—when ye see them so clear and bright among the red of the withered leaves—well, ye cannot help thinking about some of our old Scotch songs, and there's something in that that's just like to bring the tears to your een. We have a wonderful and great inheritance in these songs, as ye'll find out, my lass. You English know only of Burns; but a Scotchman, who is familiar with the ways and the feelings and the speech of the peasantry, has a sort o' uncomfortable impression that Burns is at times just a bit artifeecial and leeterary—especially when he is masquerading in fine English; though at other times ye get the real lilt—what a man would sing to himself when he was all alone at the plough, in the early morning, and listening to the birds around him. But there are others that we are proud of, too—Tannahill, and John Mayne, that wrote about Logan Braes; and Hogg, and Motherwell: I'm sure o' this, that when ye read Motherwell's Jeanie Morrison, ye'll no be able to go on for greetin'."
"I beg your pardon?" said Miss Avon.
But the Laird is too intent on recalling some of the lines to notice that she has not quite understood him.