“There was nane o’ thae fine abstractions aboot your grandfaither, Ralph Gilchrist—­na, whiles he was taen sae that he couldna speak he was that mad, an’ aye he gat redder an’ redder i’ the face, till yince he gat vent, and then the ill words ran frae him like the Skyreburn [Footnote:  A Galloway mountain stream noted for sudden floods.] in spate.”

“What else did John Bairdieson say to yer faither?” asked Winsome, for the first time that day speaking humanly to Ralph.

That young man looked gratefully at her, as if she had suddenly dowered him with a fortune.  Then he paused to try (because he was very young and foolish) to account for the unaccountability of womankind.

He endeavoured to recollect what it was that he had said and what John Bairdieson had said, but with indifferent success.  He could not remember what he was talking about.

“John Bairdieson said—­John Bairdieson said—­It has clean gone out of my mind what John Bairdieson said,” replied Ralph with much shamefacedness.

The old lady looked at him approvingly.  “Ye’re no a Whig.  There’s guid bluid in ye,” she said, irrelevantly.

“Yes, I do remember now,” broke in Ralph eagerly.  “I remember what John Bairdieson said.  ‘Sit doon, minister,’ he said, ’gin yer ready to flee up to the blue bauks’” [rafters—­said of hens going to rest at nights]; “‘there’s a heap o’ folk in this congregation that’s no juist sae ready yet.’”

Ralph saw that Winsome and her grandmother were both genuinely interested in his father.

“Ye maun mind that I yince kenned yer faither as weel as e’er I kenned a son o’ mine, though it’s mony an’ mony a year sin’ he was i’ this hoose.”  Winsome looked curiously at her grandmother.  “Aye, lassie,” she said, “ye may look an’ look, but the faither o’ him there cam as near to bein’ your ain faither—­”

Walter Skirving, swathed in his chair, turned his solemn and awful face from the window, as though called back to life by his wife’s words.  “Silence, woman!” he thundered.

But Mistress Skirving did not look in the least put out; only she was discreetly silent for a minute or two after her husband had spoken, as was her wont, and then she proceeded: 

“Aye, brawly I kenned Gilbert Peden, when he used to come in at that door, wi’ his black curls ower his broo as crisp an’ bonny as his son’s the day.”

Winsome looked at the door with an air of interest.  “Did he come to see you, grandmammy?” she asked.

“Aye, aye, what else?—­juist as muckle as this young man here comes to see me.  I had the word o’ baith o’ them for’t.  Ralph Peden says that he comes to see me, an’ sae did the faither o’ him—­”

Again Mistress Skirving paused, for she was aware that her husband had turned on her one of his silent looks.

“Drive on aboot yer faither an’ John Rorrison,” she said; “it’s verra entertainin’.”

“Bairdieson,” said Winsome, correctingly.