However, everybody but the keeper who was shot, declared himself delighted with the day's sport; but on the following morning Fabian and Maurice Browne seceded from the party and amused themselves, the former by sketching, the latter by learning by heart, by means of chats with ostlers and shopkeepers, the _chronique scandaleuse_ of the neighbourhood; in the evening he triumphantly informed me that the morals of the lowest haunts in Paris were immaculate, compared to those of my simple Highland village. I am afraid this startling revelation had less effect upon me than a little incident which I witnessed next day. I had been congratulating myself upon the fact that, though all my visitors vied with each other in attentions to Mrs. Ellmer, who had become, under the influence of this sudden rush of admirers, gayer and giddier than ever, they looked upon Babiole, as her mother had prophesied, merely as a little girl and of no account. But on the morning referred to, I came upon Fabian and the child together in my garden at the foot of the hill. He was fastening some roses in the front of her blue cotton frock, and when he had done so, and stepped back a few paces to admire the effect, he claimed a kiss as a reward for his trouble. She gave it him shyly but simply. She was only a child, of course, and his little sweetheart of six years ago; and the blush that rose in her cheeks when she caught sight of me was no sign of self-consciousness, for her colour came and went at the faintest emotion of surprise or pleasure. As for Fabian, he drew her hand through his arm, and came skipping towards me like a stage peasant. 'We're going to be married, Babiole and I, as soon as we've saved up money enough,' said he. And the child laughed, delighted with this extravagant pleasantry. But, though I laughed too, I didn't see any fun in it at all; for the remembrance that the time would come when this little blossom of youth and happiness and all things fresh and sweet would be plucked from the hillside, was not in the least amusing to me. And when this young artist proceeded to devote his mornings to long rambles with 'the child,' and his afternoons to making sketches of 'the child,' I thought his attentions would be much better bestowed on a grown-up person. But as Mrs. Ellmer saw nothing to censure in all this I could not interfere. It spoilt my yearly holiday for me, though, in an unaccountable fashion; and when at the end of a fortnight my guests went away, no regrets that I felt at their departure were so keen as my ridiculous annoyance on seeing that Fabian's farewell kiss to his little sweetheart left the child in tears. CHAPTER X