Still, for some reason or another, as yet inexplicable to the girl herself, the melodious carol of a blackbird singing his heart out in a cherry tree sent a pain to her own. It seemed to fill the world with unrest, even though the house lay still as the grave; for Mrs. Cameron and the lassies were away at the milking. She covered her ears to shut out the sound and bent closer to her book, until suddenly she found herself blindfolded by a pair of strong, slender, supple hands--hands that could not be mistaken for an instant. "Tom!" she cried. "Oh, Tom! is it you?" "Tom it is," said a voice with a pleasant intonation scarcely foreign, and yet assuredly not wholly English. "_E' bene!_ Mademoiselle Grands-serieux! So this is the way you hold high holiday?" He pointed to the open book, then, as she clung delighted to his arm, put on an air of simulated disgust, perhaps to conceal the keen joy which her welcome afforded him. "Conic sections again, and I wandering round 'permiskus' calling for some of my relations to kill the fatted calf!" "The prodigal didn't come 'permiskus.' He wired ahead and they saw him from afar." "Then he didn't get an unexpected holiday, come express from Paris to Oban, and then walk thirty miles over the hills because he had missed the mail cart and was a fool----" "But why a fool?" "Why? Because the bosom of my family was absorbed in conic sections! And if that reason won't do, you really must wait until I have had some veal--for to tell truth I'm ravenous--mostly for drinks!" He watched her as she flew off, singing as she went like any blackbird out of sheer lightness of heart, and asked himself if this were not enough? If he were bound to wait for something more? For Dr. Tom Kennedy was not a man to require much time for such thoughts, especially when he had been thinking of Marjory and his welcome all that trudge of thirty miles over bog and heather. But the answer came slowly, for he was quite as much in the dark on the vexed question of Love and Marriage as most people, and the little Blind Boy with the bow and arrows was as yet a part of his Pantheon. And yet there was temptation enough to set mere romance aside, when, after anticipating his every want, and fussing over him after the manner of a hen with a solitary chicken, Marjory drew a low stool beside his chair, and, with her elbows resting on her knees and her radiant face supported on her hands, looked over him, as it were, in sheer content. "You don't know how nice it is to have you back," she said, suddenly stretching out one hand to him--a favourite gesture of hers when eager. He took it in both of his, bent over it, and kissed it. "'Tis worth the parting, child, to come back--to this." She laughed merrily. "You have such pretty manners, Tom! I expect you learnt them from grandpapa the Marquis and the _haute noblesse_. And then in Paris, I suppose----"