Now Sheila and Lavender, in their musical mutual confidences, had at an early period discovered that each of them knew something of the older English duets, and forthwith they tried a few of them, to Mackenzie’s extreme delight. Here, at last, was a sort of music he could understand--none of your moanings of widows and cries of luckless girls to the sea, but good commonsense songs, in which the lads kissed the lasses with a will, and had a good drink afterward and a dance on the green on their homeward way. There was fun in those happy May-fields, and good health and briskness in the ale-house choruses, and throughout them all a prevailing cheerfulness and contentment with the conditions of life certain to recommend itself to the contemplative mind. Mackenzie never grew tired of hearing those simple ditties. He grew confidential with the young man, and told him that those fine, commonsense songs recalled pleasant scenes to him. He, himself, knew something of English village life. When he had been up to see the great Exhibition, he had gone to visit a friend living in Brighton, and he had surveyed the country with an observant eye. He had remarked several village-greens, with the May-poles standing here and there in front of the cottages, emblazoned with beautiful banners. He had, it is true, fancied that the May-pole should be in the centre of the green; but the manner in which the waves of population swept here and there, swallowing up open spaces and so forth, would account to a philosophical person for the fact that the May-poles were now close to the village shops. “Drink to me only with thine eyes,” hummed the King of Borva to himself as he sent the two little horses along the coast road on this warm Summer day. He had heard the song for the first time on the previous evening. He had no voice to speak of; he had missed the air, and these were all the words he remembered; but it was a notable compliment, all the same, to the young man who had brought these pleasant tunes to the island.