“This is gey kind of you to run so far to see an auld woman,” she said.

Mrs. Heathcote declared that they were used to the heat, and that after the rain the air was pleasant.

“You’re two bright lassies, and you’re hearty,” she said.  “I’m auld, and just out of Cumberland, and I find it’s hot enough—­and I’m no guid at horseback at all.  I dinna know how I’m to get aboot.”

Then Mrs. Heathcote explained that there was an excellent track for a buggy all the way to Gangoil.

“Giles is aye telling me that I’m to gang aboot in a bouggey, but I dinna feel sure of thae bouggeys.”

Mrs. Heathcote, of course, praised the country carriages, and the country roads, and the country generally.  Tea was brought in, and the old lady was delighted with her guests.  Since she had been at the mill, week had followed week, and she had seen no woman’s face but that of the uncouth girl who waited upon her.  “Did ye ever see rain like that!” she said, putting up her hands.  “I thought the Lord was sending his clouds down upon us in a lump like.”  Then she told them that some of the men had declared that if it went on like that for two hours the Mary would rise and take the cottage away.  Giles, however, had declared that to be trash, as the cottage was twenty feet above the ordinary course of the river.

They were just rising to take their leave, when Giles Medlicot himself came in out of the mill.  He was a man of good presence, dark, and tall like Heathcote, but stoutly made, with a strongly marked face, given to frowning much when he was eager; bright-eyed, with a broad forehead—­certainly a man to be observed as far as his appearance was concerned.  He was dressed much as a gentleman dresses in the country at home, and was therefore accounted to be a fop by Harry Heathcote, who was rarely seen abroad in other garb than that which has been described.  Harry was an aristocrat, and hated such innovations in the bush as cloth coats and tweed trowsers and neck-hand-kerchiefs.

Medlicot had been full of wrath against his neighbor all the morning.  There had been a tone in Heathcote’s voice when he gave his parting warning as to the fire in Medlicot’s pipe which the sugar grower had felt to be intentionally insolent.  Nothing had been said which could be openly resented, but offense had surely been intended; and then he had remembered that his mother had been already some months at the mill, and that no mark of neighborly courtesy had been shown to her.  The Heathcotes had, he thought, chosen to assume themselves to be superior to him and his, and to treat him as though he had been some laboring man who had saved money enough to purchase a bit of land for himself.  He was, therefore, astonished to find the two young ladies sitting with his mother on the very day after such an interview as that of the preceding night.

“The leddies from Gangoil, Giles, have been guid enough to ride over and see me,” said his mother.