“John Bairdieson is an ungallant man.  It’ll be from him that ye learned to rin awa’,” retorted the old lady.

“Grandmother,” interrupted Winsome, who had suffered quite enough from this, “Master Peden has come to see you, and to ask how you find yourself to-day.”

“Aye, aye, belike, belike—­but Maister Ralph Peden has the power o’ his tongue, an’ gin that be his errand he can say as muckle for himsel’.  Young fowk are whiles rale offcecious!” she said, turning to Ralph with the air of an appeal to an equal from the unaccountabilities of a child.

Winsome lifted some stray flowers that Jess Kissock had dropped when she sped out of the room, and threw them out of the window with an air of disdain.  This to some extent relieved her, and she felt better.  It surprised Ralph, however, who, being wholly innocent and unembarrassed by the recent occurrence, wondered vaguely why she did it.

“Noo tell me mair aboot your faither,” continued Mistress Skirving.  “I canna mak’ oot whaur the Marrow pairt o’ ye comes in —­I suppose when ye tak’ to rinnin’ awa’.”

“Grandmammy, your pillows are not comfortable; let me sort them for you.”

Winsome rose and touched the old lady’s surroundings in a manner that to Ralph was suggestive of angels turning over the white-bosomed clouds.  Then Ralph looked at his pleasant querist to find out if he were expected to go on.  The old lady nodded to him with an affectionate look.

“Well,” said Ralph, “my father is like nobody else.  I have missed my mother, of course, but my father has been like a mother for tenderness to me.”

“Yer grandfaither, auld Ralph Gilchrist, was sore missed.  There was thanksgiving in the parish for three days after he died!” said the old lady by way of an anticlimax.

Winsome looked very much as if she wished to say something, which brought down her grandmother’s wrath upon her.

“Noo, lassie, is’t you or me that’s haein’ a veesit frae this young man?  Ye telled me juist the noo that he had come to see me.  Then juist let us caa’ oor cracks, an’ say oor says in peace.”

Thus admonished, Winsome was silent.  But for the first time she looked at Ralph with a smile that had half an understanding in it, which made that yonng man’s heart leap.  He answered quite at random for the next few moments.

“About my father—­yes, he always takes up the Bibles when John Bairdieson preaches.”

“What!” said the old lady.

“I mean, John Bairdieson takes up the Bibles for him when he preaches, and as he shuts the door, John says over the railing in a whisper,’Noo, dinna be losin’ the Psalms, as ye did this day three weeks’; or perhaps,’Be canny on this side o’ the poopit; the hinge is juist pitten on wi’ potty [putty];’ whiles John will walk half-way down the kirk, and then turn to see if my father has sat quietly down according to instructions.  This John has always done since the day when some inward communing overcame my father before he began his sermon, and he stood up in the pulpit without saying a word till the people thought that he was in direct communion with the Almighty.”