’Katie dear,’ whimpered old mother Paterson, as Ronald took out the things from the hamper, ’ye jist spoil every one that comes near ye. Such extravagance—such waste—many’s the time I wish ye would get married, and have a man to look after ye——’
’Stop your havering—who would marry an auld woman like me?’ said Mrs. Menzies with a laugh. ’Ay, and what’s the extravagance, noo, that has driven ye oot o’ your mind?’
’Champagne again!’ the old woman said, shaking her head. ’Champagne again! Dear me, it’s like a Duke’s house——’
’What, ye daft auld craytur? Would ye have me take my cousin Ronald for his first trip to Campsie Glen, and bring out a gill o’ whisky in a soda-water bottle?’
’Indeed, Katie, lass, ye needna have brought one thing or the other for me,’ he said. ’It’s a drop o’ water, and nothing else, that will serve my turn.’
’We’ll see about that,’ she said confidently.
Her provisioning was certainly of a sumptuous nature—far more sumptuous, indeed, than the luncheons the rich Americans used to have carried down for them to the lochside, and a perfect banquet as compared with the frugal bit of cold beef and bread that Lord Ailine and his friends allowed themselves on the hill. Then, as regards the champagne, she would take no refusal—he had to submit. She was in the gayest of moods; she laughed and joked; nay, at one point, she raised her glass aloft, and waved it round her head, and sang—
_’O send Lewie Gordon hame,_ _And the lad I daurna name;_ _Though his back be at the wa’,_ _Here’s to him that’s far awa’!’_
’What, what, lass?’ Ronald cried grimly. ’Are ye thinking ye’re in a Highland glen? Do ye think it was frae places like this that the lads were called out to follow Prince Charlie?’
’I carena—I carena!’ she said; for what had trivial details of history to do with a jovial picnic in Campsie Glen? ’Come, Ronald, lad, tune up! Hang the Harmony Club!—give us a song in the open air!’
_’It was about the Martinmas time,_ _And a gay time it was then, O,_ _That our guidwife had puddins to mak’,_ _And she boiled them in the fan, O’—_
and then rang out the chorus, even the old mother Paterson joining in with a feeble treble—
_’O the barrin’ o’ our door, weel, weel, weel,_ _And the barrin’ o’ our door, weel!’_