as the lady housekeeper stepped with her skirts kilted, three tucks of
her white petticoat showing below, and her best India shawl upon her
back (if the day were fine) in a pattern of radiant dyes, she would
sometimes overtake her relatives preceding her more leisurely in the
same direction. Gib of course was absent: by skreigh of day he had been
gone to Crossmichael and his fellow-heretics; but the rest of the family
would be seen marching in open order: Hob and Dand, stiff-necked,
straight-backed six-footers, with severe dark faces, and their plaids
about their shoulders; the convoy of children scattering (in a state of
high polish) on the wayside, and every now and again collected by the
shrill summons of the mother; and the mother herself, by a suggestive
circumstance which might have afforded matter of thought to a more
experienced observer than Archie, wrapped in a shawl nearly identical
with Kirstie's, but a thought more gaudy and conspicuously newer. At
the sight, Kirstie grew more tall - Kirstie showed her classical
profile, nose in air and nostril spread, the pure blood came in her
cheek evenly in a delicate living pink.

"A braw day to ye, Mistress Elliott," said she, and hostility and
gentility were nicely mingled in her tones. "A fine day, mem," the
laird's wife would reply with a miraculous curtsey, spreading the while
her plumage - setting off, in other words, and with arts unknown to the
mere man, the pattern of her India shawl. Behind her, the whole
Cauldstaneslap contingent marched in closer order, and with an
indescribable air of being in the presence of the foe; and while Dandie
saluted his aunt with a certain familiarity as of one who was well in
court, Hob marched on in awful immobility. There appeared upon the face
of this attitude in the family the consequences of some dreadful feud.
Presumably the two women had been principals in the original encounter,
and the laird had probably been drawn into the quarrel by the ears, too