This time the children were frankly delighted.
"It's just like _Kidnapped_, father," cried Hugh
John, more truly than he dreamed of, "there's the
Flight through the Heather, you remember, and the
tall man is Allan Breck, heading off the soldiers
after the Red Fox was shot. There was a sentinel
that whistled, too--Allan heard him when he was
fishing, and learned the tune--oh, and a lot of
things the same!"
"I like the part best where Alice Bean gives him
the papers," said Sweetheart; "perhaps she was in
love with him, too."
"Pshaw!" cried Toady Lion; "much good that did him.
He never even got them looked at. But it was a pity
that he did not get a chance at a King George
soldier with that lovely sword and steel pistol.
The Highlanders had all the luck."
"I would have banged it off anyway," declared Hugh
John; "fancy carrying a pistol like that all the
way, scouting and going Indian file, and never
getting a shot at anybody!"
"What I want to know," said Sweetheart, dreamily,
"is why they all thought Edward a traitor. I
believe the papers that Alice Bean Lean put in his
bag would reveal the secret, if Waverley only had
time to read them."
"Him," said Sir Toady, naturally suspicious of all
girls' heroes, "why, he's always falling down and
getting put to bed. Then somebody has to nurse
him. Why doesn't he go out and fight, like Fergus
Mac-Ivor? Then perhaps Flora would have him; though
what he wanted her for--a girl--I don't know. She
could only play harps and--make poetry."
So with this bitter scorn for the liberal arts,
they all rushed off to enact the whole story, the
tale-teller consenting, as occasion required, to
take the parts of the wounded smith, the stern
judge, or the Cameronian Captain. Hugh John
hectored insufferably as Waverley. Sir Toady
scouted and stalked as the tall Highlander, whom he
refused to regard as anybody but Allan Breck.
Sweetheart moved gently about as Alice
Bean--preparing breakfast was quite in her
line--while Maid Margaret, wildly excited, ran
hither and thither as a sort of impartial chorus,
warning all and sundry of the movements of the
enemy.
I saw her last, seated on a knoll and calling out
"Bang" at the pitch of her voice. She was, she
explained, nothing less imposing than the castle of
Edinburgh itself, cannonading the ranks of the
Pretender. While far away, upon wooden chargers,
Balmawhapple's cavalry curvetted on the slopes of
Arthur's Seat and cracked vain pistols at the
frowning fortress. There was, in fact, all through
the afternoon, a great deal of imagination loose in
our neighbourhood. And even far into the gloaming
sounds of battle, boastful recriminations, the
clash of swords, the trample and rally of the heavy
charge, even the cries of the genuinely wounded,
came fitfully from this corner and that of the wide
shrubberies.
And when all was over, as they sat reunited, Black
Hanoverian and White Cockade, victor and
vanquished, in the kindly truce of the
supper-table, Hugh John delivered his verdict.
"That's the best tale you have told us yet. Every
man of us needed to have sticking-plaster put on
when we came in--even Sweetheart!"
Than which, of course, nothing _could_ have been
more satisfactory.