After Mrs. West had walked with Sir S. in the churchyard of St. Michael's, he seemed very thoughtful and a little gloomy, even stiff in his manner with me. At first I felt it must be that she had said something to change him toward me, but again I told myself that that was a silly and far-fetched suspicion. It was more likely that he disapproved of my "larking" with the American boys and giving them a glove to divide in bits. Afterward, too, when they turned up at our hotel, he might easily have thought I'd encouraged them to follow us again.
I hoped for a chance to put that idea out of his mind, but next morning, starting for Melrose, Vedder had the place next Sir S., and Basil, Mrs. James, and I were all three together behind.
We started before Aline West and her friends the Vannecks (her special one is a widower, very rich, who has proposed several times, she told Mrs. James); but the four boys waited for us to get off again, so they might know where we were going; and I began to be almost angry, because of the wrong impression their nonsense was making on Sir S. It had been so good to get him back yesterday that it was worse than ever so see him slipping quietly away once more.
If it hadn't been for these worries, it would have been a wonderful day.
From Dumfries we ran up and down nice scallopy hills, crossing the Annan at a place named Beattock, for Moffat, where there are sulphur wells a girl discovered two hundred years ago, and made the fortune of the town. Then there was a lovely road along Moffat Water, with a succession of wild green dells and hillsides cleft with fern-choked ravines. Still we were in Burns's country, for by Craigie Burn lived Jean Lorimer, to whom he wrote love-songs; and a little farther on was the scene where "Willie brewed a peck o' maut." The next bit of beauty was associated with the Ettrick Shepherd (I can't bear to think of his name being Hogg), for he wrote a Covenanter story, "Brownie of Bodesbeck," about a mountain we could see hovering in the distance.
All Moffatdale looked a haunt for fairies, so no wonder it is cram full of legends; and if I had been sitting with Sir S. I should have begged him to stop and let us scramble up a rocky path to the haunt of a pale spirit disguised as a waterfall. The Gray Mare's Tail is a disguising name, too, for there is nothing gray about it, but all white as streaming moonlight; and Sir S. and I together might have stood a good chance of finding the rainbow key, sparkling on some cushion of irridescent spray. We missed the chance, however; and who knows if it will ever come again?