But never quite to her level either.  To me she was always something above and beyond.  I might brace myself and blame myself, and do what I would, but still I could not feel that the same blood ran in our veins, and that she was but a country lassie, as I was a country lad.  The more I loved her the more frightened I was at her, and she could see the fright long before she knew the love.  I was uneasy to be away from her, and yet when I was with her I was in a shiver all the time for fear my stumbling talk might weary her or give her offence.  Had I known more of the ways of women I might have taken less pains.

“You’re a deal changed from what you used to be, Jack,” said she, looking at me sideways from under her dark lashes.

“You said not when first we met,” says I.

“Ah!  I was speaking of your looks then, and of your ways now.  You used to be so rough to me, and so masterful, and would have your own way, like the little man that you were.  I can see you now with your touzled brown hair and your mischievous eyes.  And now you are so gentle and quiet and soft-spoken.”

“One learns to behave,” says I.

“Ah, but, Jack, I liked you so much better as you were!”

Well, when she said that I fairly stared at her, for I had thought that she could never have quite forgiven me for the way I used to carry on.  That anyone out of a daft house could have liked it, was clean beyond my understanding.  I thought of how when she was reading by the door I would go up on the moor with a hazel switch and fix little clay balls at the end of it, and sling them at her until I made her cry.  And then I thought of how I caught an eel in the Corriemuir burn and chivied her about with it, until she ran screaming under my mother’s apron half mad with fright, and my father gave me one on the ear-hole with the porridge stick which knocked me and my eel under the kitchen dresser.  And these were the things that she missed!  Well, she must miss them, for my hand would wither before I could do them now.  But for the first time I began to understand the queerness that lies in a woman, and that a man must not reason about one, but just watch and try to learn.

We found our level after a time, when she saw that she had just to do what she liked and how she liked, and that I was as much at her beck and call as old Rob was at mine.  You’ll think I was a fool to have had my head so turned, and maybe I was; but then you must think how little I was used to women, and how much we were thrown together.  Besides she was a woman in a million, and I can tell you that it was a strong head that would not be turned by her.

Why, there was Major Elliott, a man that had buried three wives, and had twelve pitched battles to his name, Edie could have turned him round her finger like a damp rag—­she, only new from the boarding school.  I met him hobbling from West Inch the first time after she came, with pink in his cheeks and a shine in his eye that took ten years from him.  He was cocking up his grey moustaches at either end and curling them into his eyes, and strutting out with his sound leg as proud as a piper.  What she had said to him the Lord knows, but it was like old wine in his veins.