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Bide-a-Wee Cottage, Pettybaw, East Neuk o' Fife. To my trusty fieres, Mony's the time I hae ettled to send ye a screed, but there was aye something that cam' i' the gait. It wisna that I couldna be fashed, for aften hae I thocht o' ye and my hairt has been wi' ye mony's the day.
We have grown to be good friends, David and I, and I have been permitted the signal honour of painting him at his work. The loom stands by an eastern window, and the rare Pettybaw sunshine filters through the branches of a tree, shines upon the dusty window-panes, and throws a halo round David's head that he well deserves and little suspects.
The mellow ploughed earth on the right hand stretched down to the shore-line, and a plough-boy walked up and down the long, straight furrows whistling 'My Nannie's awa'. Pettybaw is so far removed from the music-halls that their cheap songs and strident echoes never reach its sylvan shades, and the herd-laddies and plough-boys still sweeten their labours with the old classic melodies.
Salemina was making Jubilee sandwiches at Pettybaw House, Miss Dalziel was asleep in her room, I was being devoured slowly by curiosity, when Francesca came down without a word, walked out of the front door, went up to the main street, and entered the village post-office without so much as a backward glance. She was a changed being, then!
"I am intoxicated with the caller air of Pettybaw," I rejoined, leaning on the window-sill and looking at the stars, while I thought: "Edinburgh was beautiful; it is the most beautiful grey city in the world; it lacked one thing only to make it perfect, and Pettybaw will have that before many moons:
The blue sea sparkled, and Pettybaw Sands gleamed white a mile or two in the distance, the pretty stone church raised its curved spire from the green trees, the manse next door was hidden in vines, the sheep lay close to the grey stone walls and the young lambs nestled beside them, while the song of the burn, tinkling merrily down the glade on the edge of which we stood, and the cawing of the rooks in the little wood, were the only sounds to be heard.
It was drizzling, too, and we had promised Miss Ardmore and Miss Macrae to aid with the last Jubilee decorations, the distribution of medals at the church, and the children's games and tea on the links in the afternoon. We have determined not to desert our beloved Pettybaw for the metropolis on this great day, but to celebrate it with the dear fowk o' Fife who had grown to be a part of our lives.
I laughed as I saw her, she looked so like Sir Patrick Spens in the ballad play at Pettybaw, a memorable occasion when Ronald Macdonald caught her acting that tragic role in his ministerial gown, the very day that Himself came from Paris to marry me in Pettybaw, dear little Pettybaw! "I came in to find out if your bed is as bad as mine, but I see you have not slept in it," she whispered.
You come to it by turning the corner from the inn, first passing the cottage where the lady wishes to rent two rooms for fifteen shillings a week, but will not give much attendance, as she is slightly asthmatic, and the house is always as clean as it is this minute, and the view from the window looking out on Pettybaw Bay canna be surpassed at ony money.
"Pardon this intrusion, but the Castle people are here," she continued in what is known as a stage whisper, that is, one that can be easily heard by a thousand persons, "the Castle people and the ladies from Pettybaw House; and Mr. Macdonald is coming down the loaning; but Calamity Jane is making her toilet in the kitchen, and you cannot take Mr. Beresford through into the sitting-room at present.
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