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Annapla had decidedly an industrious wooer, more constant than the sun itself, for he seemed to shine in her heavens night and day.
"Awa'! awa'!" he cried, an implacable face against their whining protestations "Awa', or I'll gie ye the gairde! If I was my uncle Erchie, I wad pit an end to your argy-bargying wi' hail frae a gun!" But to Annapla it was, "Puir deevils, it's gey hard to gie them the back o' the haun' and them sae used to rougher times in Doom. What'll they think o' us?
The effect upon the Baron was amazing. He grew livid with some feeling repressed. It was only for a moment; the next he was for changing the conversation, but Count Victor had still his quiver to empty. "Touching flageolets?" said he, but there his arrow missed. Doom only laughed. "For that," said he, "you must trouble Annapla or Mungo.
But these were speculations beyond the sibyl of his odd adoration; Annapla was too intent upon her own elderly love-affairs to be interested in those upstairs. And upstairs, by now, a topic had at last come on between the silent pair that did not make for love or cheerfulness.
In pauses of the wind he and Annapla were to be heard in other quarters of the house in clamant conversation otherwise it had seemed to Count Victor that Doom was left, an enchanted castle, to him and Olivia alone. For the father relapsed anew into his old strange melancholies, dozing over his books, indulging feint and riposte in the chapel overhead, or gazing moodily along the imprisoned coast.
When Annapla was gone then Doom got the baldest of histories. He was encouraged to believe that all this busy day of adventure had been due to a simple quarrel after a game of cards, and where he should have preferred a little more detail he had to content himself with a humorous narrative of the escape, the borrowing of the coat, and the interview with the Duchess.
When we were campaignin' wi' Marlborough oor lads had many a time to sleep wi' the cannon dirlin' aboot them. Ye get us'd to't, ye get us'd to't, as Annapla says aboot bein' a weedow woman. And if ye hae noticed it, Coont, there's nae people mair adapted for fechtin' under diffeeculties than oor ain; that's what maks the Scots the finest sogers in the warld.
No; it would not deceive me, that; it would not give me any pleasure. We have a proverb in the Highlands, that Annapla will often be saying, that the rook thinks the pigeon hen would be bonny if her wings were black; and that is a seanfhacal that is an old-word that is true."
"Is the hare ready?" asked the Baron suspiciously. "It's no jist a'thegether what ye micht ca' ready," answered Mungo without hesitation; "but it can be here het in nae time, and micht agree wi' the Count better nor the cauld fowl." "Tell Annapla to do the best she can," broke in the Baron on his servant's cheerful garrulity; and Mungo with another salute disappeared.
For half an hour he busied himself with aiding Annapla at the preparation of dinner, suddenly become silent as a consequence of what the letter had revealed to him, and then he went out to prepare his boat for his trip to town.
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