“Are ye not sleeping, grandmother?” she said.

The old lady looked up with a resentful air.

“Sleepin’!  The lassie’s gane gyte! [out of her senses].  What for wad I be sleepin’ in the afternune?  An’ me wi’ the care o’ yer gran’faither—­sic a handling, him nae better nor a bairn, an’ you a bit feckless hempie wi’ yer hair fleeing like the tail o’ a twa-year-auld cowt! [colt].  Sleepin’ indeed!  Na, sleepin’s nane for me!”

The young girl came up and put her arms about her grandmother.

“That’s rale unceevil o’ ye, noo, Granny Whitemutch!” she said, speaking in the coaxing tones to which the Scots’ language lends itself so easily, “an’ it’s just because I hae been sae lang at the blanket-washin’, seein’ till that hizzy Meg.  An’ ken ye what I saw!-ane o’ the black dragoons in full retreat, grannie; but he left his camp equipage ahint him, as the sergeant said when—­Ye ken the story, grannie.  Ye maun hae been terrible bonny in thae days!”

“‘Deed I’m nane sae unbonny yet, for a’ yer helicat flichtmafleathers, sprigget goons, an’ laylac bonnets,” said the old lady, shaking her head till the white silk top-knots trembled.  “No, nor I’m nane sae auld nayther.  The gudeman in the corner there, he’s auld and dune gin’ye like, but no me—­no me!  Gin he warna spared to me, I could even get a man yet,” continued the lively old lady, “an’ whaur wad ye be then, my lass, I wad like to ken?”

“Perhaps I could get one too, grannie,” she said.  And she shook her head with an air of triumph.  Winsome kissed her grandmother gently on the brow.

“Nane o’ yer Englishy tricks an’ trokin’s,” said she, settling the white muslin band which she wore across her brow wrinkleless and straight, where it had been disarrayed by the onslaught of her impulsive granddaughter.

“Aye,” she went on, stretching out a hand which would have done credit to a great dame, so white and slender was it in spite of the hollows which ran into a triangle at the wrist, and the pale-blue veins which the slight wrinkles have thrown into relief.

“An’ I mind the time when three o’ his Majesty’s officers—­nane o’ yer militia wi’ horses that rin awa’ wi’ them ilka time they gang oot till exerceese, but rale sodgers wi’ sabre-tashies to their heels and spurs like pitawtie dreels.  Aye, sirs, but that was before I married an elder in the Kirk o’ the Marrow.  I wasna twenty-three when I had dune wi’ the gawds an’ vanities o’ this wicked world.”

“I saw a minister lad the day—­a stranger,” said Winsome, very quietly.

“Sirce me,” returned her grandmother briskly; “kenned I e’er the like o’ ye, Winifred Chayrteris, for licht-heedit-ness an’ lack o’ a’ common sense!  Saw a minister an’ ne’er thocht, belike, o’ sayin’ cheep ony mair nor if he had been a wutterick [weasel].  An’ what like was he, na?  Was he young, or auld—­or no sae verra auld, like mysel’?  Did he look like an Establisher by the consequence o’ the body, or—­”