“Did ye want me, my leddy?” he asked.
“No,” she answered.
“I wasna sure whether ye noddit ’cause ye wantit me or no,” said Malcolm, and turned to reascend the dune.
“Where are you going now?” she asked.
“Ow! nae gait in particlar. I jist cam oot to see hoo things war luikin.”
“What things?”
“Ow! jist the lift (sky), an’ the sea, an’ sic generals.”
That Malcolm’s delight in the presences of Nature—I say presences, as distinguished from forms and colours and all analyzed sources of her influences—should have already become a conscious thing to himself requires to account for it the fact that his master, Graham, was already under the influences of Wordsworth, whom he had hailed as a Crabbe that had burst his shell and spread the wings of an eagle: the virtue passed from him to his pupil.
“I won’t detain you from such important business,” said Lady Florimel, and dropped her eyes on her book.
“Gien ye want my company, my leddy, I can luik aboot me jist as weel here as ony ither gait,” said Malcolm.