"
"I dare say that is a good simile," he reflected. "Are they different
when you know them well?"
"I have never known one but Wee Brown Elspeth," I answered, thinking it
over.
He did start then, in the strangest way.
"What!" he exclaimed. "What did you say?"
I was quite startled myself. Suddenly he looked pale, and his breath
caught itself.
"I said Wee Elspeth, Wee Brown Elspeth. She was only a child who played
with me," I stammered, "when I was little."
He pulled himself together almost instantly, though the color did not
come back to his face at once and his voice was not steady for a few
seconds. But he laughed outright at himself.
"I beg your pardon," he apologized. "I have been ill and am rather
nervous. I thought you said something you could not possibly have
said. I almost frightened you. And you were only speaking of a little
playmate. Please go on."
"I was only going to say that she was fair like that, fairer than any
one I had ever seen; but when we played together she seemed like any
other child. She was the first I ever knew."
I told him about the misty day on the moor, and about the pale troopers
and the big, lean leader who carried Elspeth before him on his saddle. I
had never talked to any one about it before, not even to Jean Braidfute.
But he seemed to be so interested, as if the little story quite
fascinated him.
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