Then he would have reproved himself for the unlicensed exclamation as savouring of the “minced oath,” had he not been taken up with watching the dogs.  There were two of them.  One was a large, rough deerhound, clean cut about the muzzle, shaggy everywhere else, which ran first, taking the hedges in his stride.  The other was a small, short-haired collie, which, with his ears laid back and an air of grim determination not to be left behind, followed grimly after.  The collie went under the hedges, diving instinctively for the holes which the hares had made as they went down to the water for their evening drink.  Both dogs crossed to windward of him, racing for their mistress.  When they reached the green level where the great tubs stood they leaped upon her with short sharp barks of gladness.  She fended them off again with gracefully impatient hand; then bending low, she pointed to the loch-side a quarter of a mile below, where a herd of half a dozen black Galloway cows, necked with the red and white of the smaller Ayrshires, could be seen pushing its way through the lush heavy grass of the water meadow.

“Away by there!  Fetch them, Roger!” she cried.  “Haud at them—­the kye’s in the meadow!”

The dogs darted away level.  The cows continued their slow advance, browsing as they went, but in a little while their dark fronts were turned towards the dogs as after a momentary indecision they recognized an enemy.  With a startled rush the herd drove through the meadow and poured across the unfenced road up to the hill pasture which they had left, whose scanty grasses had doubtless turned slow bovine thoughts to the coolness of the meadow grass, and the pleasure of standing ruminant knee-deep in the river, with wavy tail nicking the flies in the shade.

For a little while Ralph Peden breathed freely again, but his satisfaction was short-lived.  One girl was discomposing enough, but here were two.  Moreover the new-comer, having arranged some blankets in a tub to her satisfaction, calmly tucked up her skirts in a professional manner and got bare-foot into the tub beside them.  Then it dawned upon Ralph, who was not very instructed on matters of household economy, that he had chanced upon a Galloway blanket-washing; and that, like the gentleman who spied upon Musidora’s toilet, of whom he had read in Mr. James Thomson’s Seasons, he might possibly see more than he had come out to see.

Yet it was impossible to rise composedly and take his way manseward.  Ralph wished now that he had gone at the first alarm.  It had become so much more difficult now, as indeed it always does in such cases.  Moreover, he was certain that these two vagabonds of curs would return.  And they would be sure to find him out.  Dogs were unnecessary and inconvenient beasts, always sniffing and nosing about.  He decided to wait.  The new-comer of the kilts was after all no Naiad or Hebe.  Her outlines did not resemble to any marked degree the plates in his excellent classical dictionary.  She was not short in stature, but so strong and of a complexion so ruddily beaming above the reaming white which filled the blanket tub, that her mirthful face shone like the sun through an evening mist.