III


IN MARGET'S GARDEN

The cart track to Whinnie Knowe was commanded by a gable window, and
Whinnie boasted that Marget had never been taken unawares. Tramps,
finding every door locked, and no sign of life anywhere, used to
express their mind in the "close," and return by the way they came,
while ladies from Kildrummie, fearful lest they should put Mrs. Howe
out, were met at the garden gate by Marget in her Sabbath dress, and
brought into a set tea as if they had been invited weeks before.

Whinnie gloried most in the discomfiture of the Tory agent, who had
vainly hoped to coerce him in the stack yard without Marget's
presence, as her intellectual contempt for the Conservative party
knew no bounds.

"Sall she saw him slip aff the road afore the last stile, and wheep
roond the fit o' the gairden wa' like a tod (fox) aifter the
chickens.

"'It's a het day, Maister Anderson,' says Marget frae the gairden,
lookin' doon on him as calm as ye like. 'Yir surely no gaein' to
pass oor hoose without a gless o' milk?'

"Wud ye believe it, he wes that upset he left withoot sayin' 'vote,'