Then we went to Kirkcudbright, where there is an old castle, very dirty, but where we stayed in the loveliest old inn. It was so "comfy" and home-like at the "Selkirk" that it seemed as if the hostelry had wandered out into the country one fine day and—forgot the way to come back again! We liked it so much because it was kept by a nice jolly man, whose mother had been good to father once when he was ill, and who made the nicest cakes. We were in clover there, I can tell you. Specially because "Mac" (the painter whom, when I was very little, I once named "The Little Brown Bear") came for walks with us, and made us laugh at dinner till we youngsters nearly got sent from the table. Yet it wasn't a bit our fault. He told us a lot of things, and I could see father listening with all his ears, and not even checking Sir Toady when he stole the sugar, though he saw him. I was sure that something would come out of that. You see, I know father's ways. And so it comes about that I don't need to write any of the funny things that we heard that night, or the nights that followed. You have only to read them in the chapters of Little Esson, the part all about Ladas II, and the trip in the caravan. I think that father ought really to have sent some of the money he got to "The Little Brown Bear"—but I don't believe he ever did.

"Mac owes me more than that!" he said, when I asked him about it. "I brought him up by hand!"

I presume he meant the way Hugh John, my brother, brings up Sir Toady—though that is with both hands, sometimes feet too.

There was one Sunday that I remember very well; at Newton Stewart it was. There had been (or was going to be) a kind of circus in the town. Or maybe they were only resting, as even circus folk must do sometimes.

Anyway I looked out at the window in the early morning, and if I had seen a ghost I could not have been more surprised. And so would you—for there, calmly grazing on the field just under my window, as quietly as if it had been a cow, was a huge elephant! I did not see any circus vans, nor the tents, nor anything—save and except this great Indian elephant in the middle of the green field! You may imagine I thought that I was still dreaming. I watched it pad-padding softly about, taking the greatest pleasure in rolling like a donkey when the harness is taken off. It also rubbed the big soft spreads of its feet on the softer grass. I suppose its poor soles were sore with traveling over our hard cycling roads, and now it was keeping Sunday after its kind, doing its best to obey the commandment. And, as father says, what more can any of us do than be fully persuaded in our own minds? One thing I noticed which astonished me, and I think it will most people. The big beast must have weighed a ton, I should think, at the least. And yet, as it went here and there over the field of nice Galloway grass, it walked so softly that the grass "rose elastic from its airy tread." Yes, it actually did. Even Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself could hardly have found a footmark in a quarter of an hour. Why, even the Maid, not to speak of myself, could not get so lightly over the ground as that. We watched the elephant all that day, whenever we could, that is—and thought of him in church, though the minister was a nice man, nice-looking too, and did not preach too long. It was, of course, frightfully wicked of us. Because it was in one of the old "Kirks of the Martyrs" that the service was held. But when the minister came to see us in the evening, we showed him the elephant still grazing away, wig-wagging its long trunk like a supple pendulum, and switching away quite imaginary flies with its tiny tail! The minister was such a very good sort that we thought we ought to own up why we had been restless in church. (He might have seen us, you know.) So I said we were ashamed that we had not attended better to his sermon. And do you know what he answered back, after seeing the elephant take a double donkey roll, with its great sausagey legs in the air? "I'm glad," he said, "that I did not see the elephant do that before sermon. For if I had, I don't believe that I could have preached!"

"A pretty nice sort of a minister, that!" said Hugh John afterwards.

"I should go to his church myself," cried Toady Lion, and then, checking himself suddenly under the gaze of Hugh John, he added, "I mean, when I had to!"

There—that is quite enough to put in my Diary about a circus elephant, though I will admit that it was about the very queerest thing that ever happened to me in all my life—I mean the most unexpected, of course, for when explained it was all perfectly simple.

But I must get on with my Diary of this Galloway journey, and the "Sweethearty" things we saw there. Dear me, I had meant to tell about Gatehouse too (which happened before Newton Stewart, only I forgot). There was a nice minister there too, who went about without his hat, and smoked, and called out nice things across the street to Tom and Dick and Harry. Altogether we were fortunate in the ministers we met all through the trip. And I think the children of Gatehouse must have benefited too, owing to the nice bareheaded minister. For certainly they are not nearly so rude and pesterful as I remember them when father and I stopped there—oh, how many years ago? Ten, at least, or maybe more. Then they rang the bell of the tricycle and said horrid things when father was in the baker's shop. They made me so angry—I can remember it yet—I said I would tell father. I nearly cried. But this time there was no one who was not quite nice to us—except, Oh, yes, one person who wouldn't let us any rooms. But that did not matter. Indeed, it was a blessing. For we went farther down the street till we came to a delightful hotel or inn or something, where Miss Blackett, who kept it, was just as good to us as she could be, and gave us nice things to eat on the sly. Also the "Little Brown Bear" came again, and told us more stories in the evenings. Then, at ten or eleven at night, he got on his cycle and wheeled away into the dark. It was so nice and romantic that I wished I could have gone too. It is splendid in the summer to wheel on and on through the archway of the green and sleeping woods. It is best when you are sure of the policemen, and can ride without a light, which does no good, but makes everything dark as pitch, and as uninteresting as the Queensferry Road.

Then I saw the two boys at Creetown who once on a time were brought in from playing on the street, and tidied up so that they might be ready to kiss me. They both howled at the thought. For which I don't in the least blame them. But all the same they had high collars on, and I don't think that they would have minded nearly as much now.

This, of course, came before the elephant, but then, you see, if things don't go into my Dear Diary just when I think of them, the probability is that they won't go at all.

One long lovesome day, that I won't forget in a hurry, we spent driving through Borgue—sunny, sweet, hawthorny Borgue, where the clover is, and the green honey made by the bees that have never so much as sniffed a heather bloom. It is not Galloway, of course. It has not the qualities of Galloway, I mean. But there is something about it that makes the heart grow fonder the longer one stays there—a kind of green "den" such as the bairns have when playing at "soldiers-and-outlaws" in the wood—a sheltered sanctuary, a Peace on Earth among men of good-will. At least all we saw were that sort, and I hope the others were, just as much. Here, I know, Hugh John would shrug his shoulders. But that does not matter.

We did not linger in Borgue, however, which, with its still and pensive beauty, was like a kirk-yard on Sunday morning. Indeed, there are many of these along the shores—hidden nooks with tombstones, and beneath wave-washed bights of clean sand. For assuredly it was not the right Galloway. Rather it was like a bit of Devonshire that had floated away and got joined on here, wooded and wind-swept, a carpet of flowers all the summer long, one great bee-swarm booming all over it, from Kirk Andrews, which is its Dan, to the Tower of Plunton, which is its Beersheba. At any rate there is nothing like Borgue anywhere else in Scotland. Which its natives declare, perhaps with truth, is the same as to say in the world!

Well, we drove out of Newton Stewart past Palnure, turned sharply up the hill road towards the Loch of the Lilies, past Clatteringshaws—where not a shaw clattered, though in the wagonette there were many "she's" who did—as a very clever lady, a friend of father's, once remarked when her daughters proposed an excursion thither from Kenbank. "Deaved"[2] with their tongues, she broke out at last with "Not Clatteringshaws, but 'Clatteringshe's'!" However, on this occasion not a dog barked. We lunched in the midst of the solitude, and then father wandered away to watch his dear hills through his glasses, while the rest of us washed and cleaned up!

But the best of all days was that on the moors about the little house where father was born. I had not been there for more than ten years, and the ground was littered with memories. Father and I got off a little south of the Raider's Bridge. We skirted the water meadows, and looked back to the bulk of Bennan, still rugged and purple with heather, seeing to the right of it Cairnsmore of Carsphairn, a double molehill of palest blue paint. Then came the "Roman Camp," which, however, father told us had been made by the "Levelers" in the early half of the eighteenth century. But the other story of the farm bull which fell into the ditch, was heard roaring for days, and, when found, had eaten every green thing within reach of its hungry mouth—trees, leaves, branches and all—pleased me most.

Then there was the well where once I had drunk from father's palms, and of which there is such a very pretty picture in Sweetheart Travelers—a picture which always used to puzzle me dreadfully. For I knew that there were only father and I there. Besides which, there was not nearly light enough for Mr. Gordon Browne to "take" us, even supposing that he had been hid behind the bushes! At any rate we had a drink at the ancient spring, just for old sake's sake. Some kind person had cleaned it out not long before, and the water in the shade of the woods of the Duchrae Bank was as cool and sweet as ever. Then across the cropped meadows, again ankle-deep in aftermath, to the old stepping-stones! Father carried me on his back to the big central bowlder, which perhaps has been brought down by some forgotten flood, and at any rate had long served for the keystone of the arrangement in stepping-stones—which, even in father's day (so he told me), had been variously named "Davie's Ford," "Auld Miss," "Rab's," and "Elphie's," according to the names of the various dwellers in the pretty cottage in the wood above.