But even now, when they went along the lanes festooned as for a wedding with honeysuckle and wild roses, the faces of those they met lighted up at sight of them, and few but turned to look after them when they had passed, and Miss Penny’s truthful soul took none of the silent homage to herself.

Margaret was supremely happy.  She could not have hidden it if she had tried.  She made no attempt to do so.  She gave herself up to the rapturous enjoyment of their “lovering” with all the naive abandon of a delighted child.  The little ties and tapes and conventions, which trammel more or less all but the very simplest lives, fell from her, snapped by the expansion of her love-exalted soul.  She was back to the simple elementals.  She loved Jock, Jock loved her.  They were happy as the day was long.  Why on earth should they not show it?  If she had had her way she would have had every soul in all the world as happy as they two were.

“I feel like an elderly nurse with two very young children,” said Miss Penny to the pair of exuberants.

“O Wise Nurse!  We shall never be so young again,” laughed Graeme.

“But we are never going to grow any older inside,” laughed Margaret.

“Never!” said Graeme, with the conviction of absolute knowledge, and carolled softly—­

    “O it’s good to be young in the days of one’s youth! 
    Yes, in truth and in truth,
    It’s the very best thing in the world to be young,
    To be young, to be young in one’s youth.”

“Very apropos!” said Miss Penny.  “Did you make it on the spot?”

“In anticipation,” he laughed.  “It’s the opening song in a very charming comic opera I once committed.  But it was too good for the present frivolous age, and so I have to perform it myself.”

“I would like to give all the children on the island—­” began Margaret.

“All the other children—­” corrected Graeme.

“All the children—­including Hennie and you and me—­the jolliest feast they’ve ever had in their lives, the day we are married.”

“Of course we will, and the doctor shall get in an extra supply of palliatives.  They shall look back in after years and say—­’Do you remember that feast we had when the loveliest of all the angels came down from heaven and was married to that delightful Englishman?’—­Briton, I ought to say!  I do wish our dear old Lady Elspeth could be here.  How she would enjoy it!—­’That feast,’ they will say, ’when we were all ill for a month after and the doctor died of overwork.’  They will date back to it as ancient peoples did to the Flood.  It will be a Great White Stone Day to generations to come.  Let us hope there will be no new white stones over yonder”—­nodding in the direction of the churchyard—­“in commemoration of that great day.”

“We will draw the line short of that,” said Margaret seriously.

“We’ll give them all the gache they can eat—­home-made, and such as their constitutions are accustomed to,—­and fruit and frivolities from Guernsey.  I’ll go across the Saturday before—­”