“I’ll say it does,” said Carrie triumphandy. “There are seven lunches and seven teas in it.”

“Carrie!”

“I told Toker to put in three for our late escort.”

“And they think they’ll find their lunch and tea in the car. What’ll they do when they find it isn’t there?”

“Come home, I guess.”

“Carrie, you’re ruthless.”

“You have to be ruthless when you join a cause.”

“What cause have you joined?”

But before Carrie could answer, the red and yellow of the Macmillan tartan flashed upon the grey midge-infested air of the morning, and they saw the bard swinging down through Glenbristle toward them.

“You know, I think he’s terribly attractive,” Myrtle sighed. “I’m not surprised you’ve fallen for him even though you are married to my brother.”

“I haven’t fallen for him in that way,” said Carrie quickly. “Ours is a political and literary friendship.”

“Just that,” Myrtle murmured in a far-away reflective tone of voice. “Oh well, I’m not interested at all in politics.”

“Hullo,” the poet exclaimed, with a genuinely glad smile. “I was afraid I wasn’t going to see you both again. Somebody pinched our tents and we moved up to Uaimh na Laoigh last Friday.”

“Isn’t that the most melancholy sound you ever heard, Carrie? It’s like one of those sad noises you hear out at sea in a fog. Say it again, will you, Mr Poet?”

“I wish I could pronounce Gaelic as well as he does,” Carrie sighed. “Well, we want to see your cave. And I’ve got a lot of business to talk. I only wish Mr Buchanan hadn’t gone away on Saturday.”

“But he didn’t go away,” said the bard. “He’s up in the cave now. He twisted his ankle. We’re both going to-morrow morning. I was just off to Kenspeckle to get some food. We’re clean out of it.”

“We’ve brought you some provisions. So you can put that basket on your shoulder and lead the way to your cave. I guess we’ve saved you getting a terrible drenching. There are spots of rain already, and aren’t these flies terrible!”

The bard lifted the basket and they set off along Glenbristle.

“It’s a bit of a climb,” he warned them when they reached the spur of Ben Cruet, eight hundred feet up which was the cave.

“I don’t believe we’d have dragged that lunch-basket up there,” Carrie said.

“Never,” Myrtle agreed fervidly.

However, they managed to scramble up themselves, though Myrtle had to do without the help of the poet’s hand owing to the attention he had to pay to the lunch-basket. The entrance of the cave was reached just as the rain started to come down in earnest.

“Haven’t you found a divine place to camp in!” Myrtle exclaimed.