Deep quiet reigns among these warm pine-woods, a sort of enchanted stillness amid the yellow sunshine. In the bosky hollow where the brown butterfly is hovering, old Pan might be asleep among the fern. The feathery grasses everywhere are in flower, as high as a man’s shoulder; above them shimmers the great green dragon-fly, two inches long, with his gossamer wings; and from among their clouds at places little ladybird beetles, like pin-heads, spotted scarlet and black, fall into the carriage in their flight. The wild strawberry, with its tiny white blossom, is growing on the sunny banks of the road, and wild rasps spread their tangle in the undergrowth beyond. In the narrow meadow amidst the woods a lonely mower is at work, and the air is sweet with the scent of new-mown hay. He lifts his cap respectfully as the carriage passes, for the manners of the district have not been corrupted yet by contact with rude railway navvies, nor by the shortcomings of Board schools; and the peasant still exchanges a recognition with his superior. Much more real kindliness might exist between the social classes if in our schools there were a Government grant for manners. All store nowadays seems to be set upon the three “Rs”--reading, writing, and arithmetic--as if the whole sum of human felicity lay in a knowledge of the “black art” of books. The mower was singing to himself as we came up, a soft Gaelic song that kept time to the sweep of his scythe, and Minna blushes a little as she promises to translate it in the evening, for it is a song of confessed love. The man is happy, surely, singing as he sees the glistening, swathes fall by his side to ripen in the sun: and well he may be, for has he not, like the happy birds, a nest, too, somewhere in these woods, and a blue-eyed brood that will greet his home-coming at nightfall. [Illustration] But the manor-house stands close by now, and there, on the smooth green lawn among the trees, the tennis nets are spread, and the courts marked with lines on the grass. A beautiful old place it is, its grey stone walls hot with the sunshine, and, among the thick-climbing jessamine and fuchsia, the open windows revealing tempting depths of shadow within. The sound of the wheels on the gravel brings out old Rossdhu himself, the soul of hospitality, with half a dozen of his dogs barking a welcome after their fashion, and wagging their tails. Shaggy-bearded as some of his own peasants, the old gentleman is the pink of Highland courtesy, and he assists “Miss Minna” to alight as if she were a princess. “Alec,” that is his son, he explains, “is busy inside,” and the frequent popping of corks heard there intimates his occupation.