Part 35 (1/2)

”Sunk!” said Philip, laughing and clapping his hands. ”You're doomed to be an old maid, Kate. Phonodoree says so.”

”Cruel Brownie! I'm vexed that I bothered with him,” said Kate, dropping her lip. Then nodding to her reflection in the water where the willow bough had disappeared, she said, ”Poor little Katey! He might have given you something else. Anything but that dear, eh?”

”What,” laughed Philip, ”crying? Because Phonodoree--never!”

Kate leapt up with averted face. ”What nonsense you are talking!” she said.

”There are tears in your eyes, though,” said Philip.

”No wonder, either. You're so ridiculous. And if I'm meant for an old maid, you're meant for an old bachelor--and quite right too!”

”Oh, it is, is it?”

”Yes, indeed. You've got no more heart than a mushroom, for you're all head and legs, and you're going to be just as bald some day.”

”I am, am I, mistress?”

”If I were you, Philip, I should hire myself out for a scarecrow, and then having nothing under your clothes wouldn't so much matter.”

”It wouldn't, wouldn't it?” said Philip.

She was shying off at a half circle; he was beating round her.

”But you're nearly as old as Methuselah already, and what you'll be when you're a man----”

”Lookout!”

She made him an arch curtsey and leapt round a tree, and cried from the other side, ”I know. A squeaking old croaker, with the usual old song, 'Deed yes, friends, this world is a vale of sin and misery.' The men's the misery and the women's the sin----”

”You rogue, you!” cried Philip.

He made after her, and she fled, still speaking, ”What do you think a girl wants with a----Oh! Oh! Oo!”

Her tirade ended suddenly. She had plunged into a bed of the p.r.i.c.kly gorse, and was feeling in twenty places at once what it was to wear low shoes and thin stockings.

”With a Samson, eh?” cried Philip, striding on in his riding breeches, and lifting the captured creature in his arms. ”Why, to carry her, you torment, to carry her through the gorse like this.”

”Ah!” she said, turning her face over his shoulder, and tickling his neck with her breath.

Her hair caught in a tree, and fell in a dark shower over his breast. He set her on her feet; they took hands, and went carolling down the glen together:

”The brightest jewel in my crown, Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.”

The daylight lingered as if loth to leave them. There was the fluttering of wings overhead, and sometimes the last piping of birds. The wind wandered away, and left their voices sovereign of all the air.

Then there came a distant shout; the cheer of the farm people on reaching home with the Melliah.. It awakened Philip as from a fit of intoxication.

”This is madness,” he thought. ”What am I doing?” ”He is going to speak now,” she told herself.

Her gaiety shaded off into melancholy, and her melancholy burst into wild gaiety again. The night had come down, the moon had risen, the stars had appeared. She crept closer to Philip's side, and began to tell him the story of a witch. They were near to the house the witch had lived in. There it was--that roofless cottage--that tholthan under the deep trees like a dungeon.

”Have you never heard of her, Philip? No? The one they called the Deemster's lady?”