XXII
"'O has he chosen a bonny bride,
An' has he clean forgotten me?'
An' sighing said that gay ladye,
'I would I were in my ain countrie!'"
It rained in torrents; Salemina was darning stockings in the inglenook at Bide-a-Wee Cottage, and I was reading her a Scotch letter which Francesca and I had concocted the evening before. I proposed sending the document to certain chosen spirits in our own country, who were pleased to be facetious concerning our devotion to Scotland. It contained, in sooth, little that was new, and still less that was true, for we were confined to a very small vocabulary which we were obliged to supplement now and then by a dip into Burns and Allan Ramsay.
Here is the letter:—
| Bide-a-Wee Cottage, |
| Pettybaw. |
| East Neuk o' Fife. |
To my trusty Fieres,—Mony's the time I hae ettled to send ye a screed, but there was aye something that cam' i' the gait. It wisna that I couldna be fashed, for aften hae I thocht o' ye
