The Lilac Sunbonnet: A Love Story
"An it's a guid thing," added Saunders, "that there's a new
cemetery a-makkin'. There's no room for anither dizzen in yer auld
kailyaird onyway--an' that I'm tellin' ye. An' I'm promised the
new job too. Ye can howk yer ain graves yersel's."
"Fash na yer heid, Saunders, aboot them," said the old betheral at
the door; "it's me that's to be grave-digger, but ye shall howk
them a' the same in the mornin', an' get the siller, for I'm far
ower frail--ye can hae them a' by afore nine o'clock, an' the
minister disna pu' up his bedroom blind till ten!"
Thus it was that Saunders Mowdiewort ended his connection with an
Erastian establishment, and became a true and complete member of
the Marrow kirk. His mother also attended with exemplary
diligence, but she was much troubled with a toothache on the days
of catechising, and never quite conquered her unruly member to the
last. But this did not trouble herself much--only her neighbours.
CHAPTER XVII.
WHEN THE KYE COMES HAME.
That night Saunders went up over the hill again, dressed in his
best. He was not a proud lover, and he did not take a rebuff
amiss; besides, he had something to tell Meg Kissock. When he got
to Craig Ronald, the girls were in the byre at the milking, and at
every cow's tail there stood a young man, rompish Ebie Farrish at
that at which Jess was milking, and quiet Jock Forrest at Meg's.
Ebie was joking and keeping up a fire of running comment with
Jess, whose dark-browed gipsy face and blue-black wisps of hair
were set sideways towards him, with her cheek pressed upon Lucky's
side, as she sent the warm white milk from her nimble fingers,
with a pleasant musical hissing sound against the sides of the
milking-pail.
Farther up the byre, Meg leaned her head against Crummy and milked
steadily. Apparently she and Jock Forrest were not talking at all.
Jock looked down and only a quiver of the corner of his beard
betrayed that he was speaking. Meg, usually so outspoken and full
of conversation, appeared to be silent; but really a series of
short, low-toned sentences was being rapidly exchanged, so swiftly
that no one, standing a couple of yards away, could have remarked
the deft interchange.
But as soon as Saunders Mowdiewort came to the door, Jock Forrest
had dropped Crummy's tail, and slipped silently out of the byre,
even before Meg got time to utter her usual salutation of--
"Guid een to ye, Cuif! Hoo's a' the session?"
It might have been the advent of Meg's would-be sweetheart that
frightened Jock Forrest away, or again he might have been in the
act of going in any case. Jock was a quiet man who walked sedately
and took counsel of no one. He was seldom seen talking to any man,
never to a woman--least of all to Meg Kissock. But when Meg had
many "lads" to see her in the evening, he could he observed to
smile an inward smile in the depths of his yellow beard, and a
queer subterranean chuckle pervaded his great body, so that on one
occasion Jess looked up, thinking that there were hens roosting in
the baulks overhead.
Jess and Ebie pursued their flirtation steadily and harmlessly, as
she shifted down the byre as cow after cow was relieved of her
richly perfumed load, rumbling and clinking neck chains, and
munching in their head-stalls all the while. Saunders and Meg were
as much alone as if they had been afloat on the bosom of Loch
Grannoch.
"Ye are a bonny like man," said Meg, "to tak' yer minny to speak
for ye before the session. Man, I wonder at ye. I wonder ye didna
bring her to coort for ye?"
"War ye ever afore the Session, Meg?"
"Me afore the session--ye're a fule man, but ye dinna ken what yer
sayin'--gin I thocht ye did--"
Here Meg became so violently agitated that Flecky, suffering from
the manner in which Meg was doing her duty, kicked out, and nearly
succeeded in overturning the milk-pail. Meg's quickness with hand
and knee foiled this intention, but Flecky succeeded quite in
planting the edge of her hoof directly on the Cuif's shin-bone.
Saunders thereupon let go Flecky's tail, who instantly switched it
into Meg's face with a crack like a whip.
"Ye great muckle senseless hullion!" exclaimed Meg, "gin ye are
nae use in the byre, gang oot till ye can learn to keep haud o' a
coo's tail! Ye hae nae mair sense than an Eerishman!"
There was a pause. The subject did not admit of discussion, though
Saunders was a cuif, he knew when to hold his tongue--at least on
most occasions.
"An' what brocht ye here the nicht, Cuif?" asked Meg, who, when
she wanted information, knew how to ask it directly, a very rare
feminine accomplishment.
"To see you, Meg, my dawtie," replied Saunders, tenderly edging
nearer.
"Yer what?" queried Meg with asperity; "I thocht that ye had
aneuch o' the session already for caa'in' honest fowk names; gin
ye begin wi' me, ye'll get on the stool o' repentance o' yer ain
accord, afore I hae dune wi' ye!"
"But, Meg, I hae telled ye afore that I am sair in need o' a wife.
It's byordinar' [extraordinary] lonesome up in the hoose on the
hill. An' I'm warned oot, Meg, so that I'll look nae langer on the
white stanes o' the kirkyaird."
"Gin ye want a wife, Saunders, ye'll hae to look oot for a deef
yin, for it's no ony or'nar' woman that could stand yer mither's
tongue. Na, Saunders, it wad be like leevin' i' a corn-mill
rinnin' withoot sheaves."
"Meg," said Saunders, edging up cautiously, "I hae something to
gie ye!"
"Aff wi' ye, Cuif! I'll hae nae trokin' wi' lads i' the byre--na,
there's a time for everything--especial wi' widowers, they're the
warst o' a'--they ken ower muckle. My granny used to say, gin
Solomon couldna redd oot the way o' a man wi' a maid, what wad he
hae made o' the way o' a weedower that's lookin' for his third?"
CHAPTER XVIII.
A DAUGHTER OF THE PICTS.
The Cuif put his hands in his pockets as if to keep them away from
the dangerous temptation of touching Meg. He stood with his
shoulder against the wall and chewed a straw.
"What's come o' Maister Peden thae days?" asked Meg.
"He's maist michty unsettled like," replied Saunders, "he's for a'
the world like a stirk wi' a horse cleg on him that he canna get
at. He comes in an' sits doon at his desk, an' spreads oot his
buiks, an' ye wad think that he's gaun to be at it the leevelang
day. But afore ye hae time to turn roon' an' get at yer ain wark,
the craitur'll be oot again an' awa' up to the hill wi' a buik
aneath his oxter. Then he rises early in the mornin', whilk is no
a guid sign o' a learned man, as I judge. What for should a
learned man rise afore his parritch is made? There maun be
something sair wrang," said Saunders Mowdiewort.
"Muckle ye ken aboot learned men. I suppose, ye think because ye
carry up the Bible, that ye ken a' that's in't," returned Meg,
with a sneer of her voice that might have turned milk sour. The
expression of the emotions is fine and positive in the kitchens of
the farm towns of Galloway.
"SWISH, SWISH!" steadily the white streams of milk shot into the
pails. "JANGLE, JANGLE!" went the steel head chains of the cows.
Occasionally, as Jess and Meg lifted their stools, they gave
Flecky or Speckly a sound clap on the back with their hand or
milking-pail, with the sharp command of "Stan' aboot there!" "Haud
up!" "Mind whaur yer comin'!" Such expressions as these Jess and
Meg could interject into the even tenor of their conversation, in
a way that might have been disconcerting in dialogues conducted on
other principles. But really the interruptions did not affect Ebie
Farrish or any other of the byre-visiting young men, any more than
the rattling of the chains, as Flecky and Speckly arranged their
own business at the end devoted to imports. These sharp words of
command were part of the nightly and morningly ceremony of the
"milking" at every farm. The cans could no more froth with the
white reaming milk without this accompaniment of slaps and
adjurations than Speckly, Flecky, and the rest could take their
slow, thoughtfully considerate, and sober way from the hill
pastures into the yard without Meg at the gate of the field to
cry: "Hurley, Hurley, hie awa' hame!" to the cows themselves; and
"Come awa' bye wi' them, fetch them, Roger!" to the short-haired
collie, who knew so much better than to go near their flashing
heels.
The conversation in the byre proceeded somewhat in this way:
Jess was milking her last cow, with her head looking sideways at
Ebie, who stood plaiting Marly's tail in a newfangled fashion he
had brought from the low end of the parish, and which was just
making its way among young men of taste.
"Aye, ye'll say so, nae doot," said Jess, in reply to some pointed
compliment of her admirer; "but I ken you fowk frae the laich end
ower weel. Ye hae practeesed a' that kind o' talk on the lasses
doon there, or ye wadna be sae gleg [ready] wi't to me, Ebie."
This is an observation which shows that Jess could not have eaten
more effectively of the tree of knowledge, had she been born in
Mayfair.
Ebie laughed a laugh half of depreciation, half of pleasure, like
a cat that has its back stroked and its tail pinched at the same
time.
"Na, na, Jess, it a' comes by natur'. I never likit a lassie afore
I set my een on you," said Ebie, which, to say the least of it,
was curious, considering that he had an assortment of locks of
hair--black, brown, and lint-white--up in the bottom of his
"kist" in the stable loft where he slept. He kept them along with
his whipcord and best Sunday pocket knife, and sometimes he took a
look at them when he had to move them in order to get his green
necktie. "I never really likit a lass afore, Jess, ye may believe
me, for I wasna a lad to rin after them. But whenever I cam' to
Craig Ronald I saw that I was dune for."
"STAN' BACK, YE MUCKLE SLABBER!" said Jess, suddenly and
emphatically, in a voice that could have been heard a hundred
yards away. Speckly was pushing sideways against her as if to
crowd her off her stool.
"Say ye sae, Ebie?" she added, as if she had not previously
spoken, in the low even voice in which she had spoken from the
first, and which could be heard by Ebie alone. In the country they
conduct their love-making in water-tight compartments. And though
Ebie knew very well that the Cuif was there, and may have
suspected Jock Forrest, even after his apparent withdrawal, so
long as they did not trouble him in his conversation with Jess, he
paid no heed to them, nor indeed they to him. No man is his
brother's keeper when he goes to the byre to plait cows' tails.
"But hoo div ye ken, or, raither, what gars ye think that ye're no
the first that I hae likit, Jess?"
"Oh, I ken fine," said Jess, who was a woman of knowledge, and had
her share of original sin.
"But hoo div ye ken?" persisted Ebie.
"Fine that," said Jess, diplomatically.
A DAUGHTER OF THE PICTS
"But tell us, Jess," said Ebie, who was in high good humour at
these fascinating accusations.
"Oh," said Jess, with a quick gipsy look out of her fine dark
eyes, "brawly I kenned on Saturday nicht that yon wasna the first
time ye had kissed a lass!"
"Jess," said Ebie, "ye're a wunnerfu' woman!" which was his
version of Ralph's "You are a witch." In Ebie's circle "witch" was
too real a word to be lightly used, so he said "wunnerfu' woman."
He went on looking critically at Jess, as became so great a
connoisseur of the sex.
"I hae seen, maybes, bonnier faces, as ye micht say--"
"HAUD AFF, WI' YE THERE; MIND WHAUR YER COMIN', YE MUCKLE
SENSELESS NOWT!" said Jess to her Ayrshire Hornie, who had been
treading on her toes.
"As I was sayin', Jess, I hae seen--"
"CAN YE NO UNNERSTAN', YE SENSELESS LUMP?" cried Jess, warningly;
"I'll knock the heid aff ye, gin ye dinna drap it!" still to