Free Master of Glenkeith by Jean S. Macleod Page A

bad for a beginner! But you’ll be going to Ardnashee, all the same. The Haddows wouldn’t leave you out.”
    “Will Andrew go?” Tessa asked, coming to stand beside his chair and looking out over his head to where the black cattle grazed along the river bank.
    It was easy to mark the course of the river now as it flowed down to join the waiting Dee. The trees along its banks—hawthorn and birch and rowan—were dusted with all the colours of autumn. Gold and silver on the spinning birch leaves, deepest russet and amber on the thorn, while the glory of the rowan had to be seen to be believed.
    O rowan tree, O rowan tree
    Thou’lt aye be dear to me ... .
    Once her mother had sung that and she knew now what she had meant, but she thought that there had been tears in her mother’ s voice, too.
    “I’ve been thinking a lot about Andrew lately,” Daniel Meldrum said. “He’s been working too hard. It’s time he took things easier and learned how to play, too. He’s a good shot and he’s always been keen enough to go to Ardnashee in the past.”
    “I’d rather go to paint,” Tessa said. “If I got a bidding to the shoot I could go up on to the moors at Ardnashee. I know one isn’t supposed to go otherwise when it’s the stalking season.”
    “Andrew will be there to keep an eye on you,” the old man told her with a satisfaction which he did not try to disguise. “A man should never let work shut out all the light of day for him—or a woman either!” He smiled down at her as she bent to pick up the book he had dropped. “What are you going to do to-day?” he asked.
    Still without any definite task about the house, Tessa felt that she was not pulling her weight at Glenkeith, although she had done a good deal of the nursing duties necessary before Daniel Meldrum had been allowed out of bed. She had brought up his meals and read to him, and often she had just sat quietly listening while he talked.
    That had been the most wonderful part. Andrew’s grandfather was a born story-teller and all his stories were about Scotland. When he was a boy, he had recalled, the red deer were so thick about Glenkeith that they became bold and came down close to the fences, even in the summer, although they would ran at a word, and once he had reared a young buck and it had followed him about like a dog till its antlers had grown too big for it to come in at the door. Then, in the night, it had gone, obeying some wild instinct inbred in it, although he had been very much afraid that it would not have survived outside the herd. Deer were strange things, he explained. They moved in herds and a lone male would be instantly suspect and invariably challenged. He thought that his half-tame little buck could not possibly have lived for very long.
    Tessa felt sorry for the lonely little deer and sat for a long time wondering about it.
    “What like is the weather?” Daniel asked when Andrew came in for his usual morning report on the invalid.
    “Fine and warm.” Andrew avoided looking in Tessa’s direction whenever he could. “I wish you were able to get out to see for yourself.”
    “Maybe I could if I would use that contraption old Coutts sent over here the other day,” Daniel agreed unexpectedly.
    “Oh, will you? Please, will you?” Tessa jumped to her feet, her cheeks flushed, her eyes eager. She had been begging him to try the wheel-chair for the past two days, but a strange, stubborn sort of pride had made him refuse. “Dr. Coutts said it would do you the world of good to get
    out if the weather was fine.”
    “And it would do you good, too!” He smiled at her fondly. “You’ve been cooped up here since you came, nursing me, but I must say you do it very well! Where were you thinking to take me?”
    Tessa looked across at Andrew for inspiration, surprising an expression in his eyes which made her feel suddenly vulnerable again. He did not seem quite able to adjust his mind to the thought of the trust and friendship