And with that, before my wife had time to think on a rouser of a reply (I saw it in her eye, but it had not time to come away), Thomas Thackanraip hirpled in.  Thomas came from Ayrshire near forty years since, and has been called Tammock the Ayrshireman ever since.  He was now a hearty-like man with a cottage of his own, and a cheery way with him that made him a welcome guest at all the neighbouring farmhouses, as he was at ours.  The humours of Tammock were often the latest thing in the countryside.  He was not in the least averse to a joke against himself, and that, I think, was the reason of a good deal of his popularity.  He went generally with his hand in the small of his back, as if he were keeping the machinery in position while he walked.  But he had a curious young-like way with him for so old a man, and was for ever pook-pooking at the lasses wherever he went.

“Guid e’en to ye, mistress; hoo’s a’ at Drumquhat the nicht?” says Tammock.

“Come your ways by, an’ tak’ a seat by the fire, Tammock; it’s no’ a kindly nicht for auld banes,” says the wife.

“Ay, guidwife, ‘deed and I sympathise wi’ ye,” says Tammock.  “It’s what we maun a’ come to some day.”

“Doitered auld body!” exclaimed my wife, “did ye think I was meanin’ mysel’?”

“Wha else?” said Tammock, reaching forward to get a light for his pipe from the hearth where a little glowing knot had fallen, puffing out sappy wheezes as it burned.  He looked slyly up at the mistress as he did so.

“Tammock,” said she, standing with her arms wide set, and her hands on that part of the onstead that appears to have been built for them, “wad hae ye mind that I was but a lassock when ye cam’ knoitin’ an’ hirplin’ alang the Ayrshire road frae Dalmellington.”

“I mind brawly,” said Tammock, drawing bravely away.  “Ay, Mary, ye were a strappin’ wean.  Ye said ye wadna hae me; I mind that weel.  That was the way ye fell in wi’ Drumquhat, when I gied up thochts o’ ye mysel’.”

“You gie up thochts o’ me, Tammock!  Was there ever siccan presumption?  Ye’ll no’ speak that way in my hoose.  Hoo daur ye?  Saunders, hear till him.  Wull ye sit there like a puddock on a post, an’ listen to this—­this Ayrshireman misca’ your marriet wife, Alexander M’Quhirr?  Shame till ye, man!”

My married wife was well capable of taking care of herself in anything that appertained to the strife of tongues.  In the circumstances, therefore, I did not feel called upon to interfere.

“Ye can tak’ a note o’ the circumstance an’ tell the minister the next time he comes owre,” said I, dry as a mill-hopper.

She whisked away into the milk-house, taking the door after her as far as it would go with a flaff that brought a bowl, which had been set on its edge to dry, whirling off the dresser on to the stone floor.

When the wife came back, she paused before the fragments.  We were sitting smoking very peacefully and wondering what was coming.