her to Salemina, even to gain a victory over that
blind and deaf but much beloved woman. How could I, with my heart
beating high at the thought of seeing my ain dear laddie before many
days!

"Oh, love, love, lassie,
Love is like a dizziness:
It winna let a puir body
Gang aboot his business."

PART SECOND. IN THE COUNTRY

XIV

"Now she's cast aff her bonny shoon
Made o' gilded leather,
And she's put on her Hieland brogues
To skip amang the heather.
And she's cast aff her bonny goon
Made o' the silk and satin,
And she's put on a tartan plaid
To row amang the braken."

_Lizzie Baillie_.

We are in the East Neuk o' Fife; we are in Pettybaw; we are neither
boarders nor lodgers; we are residents, inhabitants, householders, and
we live (live, mind you) in a wee theekit hoosie in the old loaning.
Words fail to tell you how absolutely Scotch we are and how blissfully
happy. It is a happiness, I assure you, achieved through great
tribulation. Salemina and I traveled many miles in railway trains, and
many in various other sorts of wheeled vehicles, while the ideal ever
beckoned us onward. I was determined to find a romantic lodging,
Salemina a comfortable one, and this special combination of virtues is
next to impossible, as every one knows. Linghurst was too much of a
town; Bonnie Craig had no respectable inn; Whinnybrae was struggling
to be a watering-place; Broomlea had no golf course within ten miles,
and we intended to go back to our native land and win silver goblets
in mixed foursomes; the "new toun o' Fairloch" (which looked centuries
old) was delightful, but we could not find apartments there; Pinkie
Leith was nice, but they were tearing up the "fore street" and laying
drain-pipes in it. Strathdee had been highly recommended, but it
rained when we were in Strathdee, and nobody can deliberately settle
in a place where it rains during the process of deliberation. No train
left this moist and dripping hamlet for three hours, so we took a
covered trap and drove onward in melancholy mood. Suddenly the clouds
lifted and the rain ceased; the driver thought we should be having
settled weather now, and put back the top of the carriage, saying
meanwhile that it was a verra dry simmer this year, and that the crops
sairly needed shoo'rs.

"Of course, if there is any district in Scotland where for any reason
droughts are possi