growth. There is a door and one window in front, besides another
little window that peeps out among the thatch. Close by the cottage,
and extending back at right angles from it, so as to inclose the
farm-yard, are two other buildings of the same size, shape, and
general appearance as the house: any one of the three looks just as
fit for a human habitation as the two others, and all three look still
more suitable for donkey-stables and pig-sties. As we drove into the
farm-yard, bounded on three sides by these three hovels, a large dog
began to bark at us; and some women and children made their
appearance, but seemed to demur about admitting us, because the master
and mistress were very religious people, and had not yet come back
from the Sacrament at Mauchline.

However, it would not do to be turned back from the very threshold of
Robert Burns; and as the women seemed to be merely straggling
visitors, and nobody, at all events, had a right to send us away, we
went into the back-door, and, turning to the right, entered a kitchen.
It showed a deplorable lack of housewifely neatness, and in it there
were three or four children, one of whom, a girl eight or nine years
old, held a baby in her arms. She proved to be the daughter of the
people of the house, and gave us what leave she could to look about
us. Thence we stepped across the narrow mid-passage of the cottage
into the only other apartment below-stairs, a sitting-room, where we
found a young man eating bread and cheese. He informed us that he did
not live there, and had only called in to refresh himself on his way
home from church. This room, like the kitchen, was a noticeably poor
one, and, besides being all that the cottage had to show for a parlor,
it was a sleeping-apartment, having two beds, which might be curtained
off, on occasion. The young man allowed us liberty (so far as in him
lay) to go upstairs. Up we crept, accordingly; and a few steps brought