'I have a letter from - '
'So I have heard.'
'Would you like to hear it?'
'No.'
'Can you not abide him?'
'I cauna thole him.'
'Is he a black?'
'He is all that.'
Well, Vailima was the one spot on earth I had any great craving to
visit, but I think she always knew I would never leave her.
Sometime, she said, she should like me to go, but not until she was
laid away. 'And how small I have grown this last winter. Look at
my wrists. It canna be long now.' No, I never thought of going,
was never absent for a day from her without reluctance, and never
walked so quickly as when I was going back. In the meantime that
happened which put an end for ever to my scheme of travel. I shall
never go up the Road of Loving Hearts now, on 'a wonderful clear
night of stars,' to meet the man coming toward me on a horse. It
is still a wonderful clear night of stars, but the road is empty.
So I never saw the dear king of us all. But before he had written
books he was in my part of the country with a fishing-wand in his
hand, and I like to think that I was the boy who met him that day
by Queen Margaret's burn, where the rowans are, and busked a fly
for him, and stood watching, while his lithe figure rose and fell
as he cast and hinted back from the crystal waters of Noran-side.
CHAPTER VIII - A PANIC IN THE HOUSE
I was sitting at my desk in London when a telegram came announcing
that my mother was again dangerously ill, and I seized my hat and
hurried to the station.
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