"Oh, but I am," I assured her; "you will see when you have work for me. I can cook, and sew--and chop wood, and even saw a little, if necessary."
Mrs. Macleod looked at me in absolute amazement, and Jamie burst into a hearty laugh. It was good to hear, and, without in the slightest knowing why, I laughed too--at what I did not know, nor much care. It was good to laugh like that!
"And to think, mother, that you told me to come down heavy on the 'strong and country raised'! Oh, this is rich! I wrote that advertisement, Miss Far--"
"Why not?" I said. He went on with his unfinished sentence.
"--And I pride myself that I rose to the occasion of mother's command to make it 'brief but explicit'."
"Poor girl, you 've had little chance to hear anything explicit from me as yet." Mrs. Macleod smiled, rather sadly I thought. "But you shall know before you go to bed. I could n't be so thoughtless as to keep you in suspense over night."
"Oh, I can wait," I said; "but what I want to know, Mr. Macleod--"
"Please call me Jamie," he said, imitating my voice and intonation.
"May I?" I replied, mimicking his own. Then we both fell to laughing like two children, and it seemed to me that I felt what it is to be young, for the first time in my life. The four dogs wagged their tails, threshing the floor with them like flails and keeping time to our hilarity; Mrs. Macleod smiled, almost happily, and Marie came in to see what it was all about.
"What do you want to know?" he said at last, mopping the tears from his eyes with his napkin.
"Why you advertised your mother as 'an elderly Scotchwoman'?"
Again we laughed, it seemed at almost nothing. The dogs whined as if wanting to join in what fun there was; the fire snapped merrily on the hearth, and the large coal-oil lamp, at the farther end of the long table, sent forth a cheerful light from under its white porcelain shade, and showed me the old room in all its simple beauty.
Overhead, the great beams and the ceiling were a rich mahogany color with age. The sides were panelled to the ceiling with the same wood. Between the two doors opening into the passageway, was a huge but beautifully proportioned marble chimney-piece that reached to the beams of the ceiling. The marble was of the highest polish, white, pale yellow, and brown in tone. Above the mantel, it formed the frame of a large canvas that showed a time-darkened landscape with mounted hunters. The whole piece was exquisitely carved with the wild grape vine--its leaves and fruit.