Sing tántará! Sing tántará!
* * * The Highland army rues
That ere they came to Cromdale!
And her maid—if she will not be able to afford a maid, who will?—French, if she likes! Blue and silver—blue and silver—that's it!"
And then the Laird, still humming his lugubrious battle-song, comes down into the saloon.
"Good morning, ma'am; good morning! Breakfast ready? I'm just ravenous. That wild lassie has walked me up and down until I am like to faint. A beautiful morning again—splendid!—splendid! And do ye know where ye will be this day next year?"
"I am sure I don't," says his hostess, busy with the breakfast-things.
"I will tell ye. Anchored in the Holy Loch, off Kilmun, in a screw-yacht. Mark my words now: this very day next year!"
CHAPTER IX.
A PROTECTOR.
"Oh, ay," says John of Skye, quite proudly, as we go on deck after breakfast, "there will be no more o' the dead calms. We will give Mr. Sutherland a good breeze or two when he comes back to the yat."
It is all Mr. Sutherland and Mr. Sutherland now!—everything is to be done because Mr. Sutherland is coming. Each belaying pin is polished so that one might see to shave in it; Hector of Moidart has spent about two hours in scraping and rubbing the brass and copper of the galley stove-pipe; and Captain John, with many grins and apologies, has got Miss Avon to sew up a rent that has begun to appear in the red ensign. All that he wants now is to have the yacht beached for a couple of days, to have the long slender sea-grass scraped from her hull: then Mr. Sutherland will see how the White Dove will sail!