Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 14, 2025
The papers said a good deal about the state of things in India, but Francis Gordon was not mentioned. In the autumn of the year 1858, when the days were growing short and the nights cold in the high region about the Horn, the son of a neighbouring farmer, who had long desired to know Kirsty better, called at Corbyknowe with his sister, ostensibly on business with David.
He laid one fold of a blanket over the lovely white face, as he had seen a mother do with a sleeping infant, called his dog, made him lie down on her feet, and told him to watch; then turned away, and went to the door. As he passed the fire, he coughed and grew faint, but recovering himself, picked up his fallen stick, and set out for Corbyknowe and Kirsty.
The young laird did not like farming, and had no love for books: in this interval between school and college, he found very little to occupy him, and not much to amuse him. Had Kirsty and her family proved as encouraging as he had expected, he would have made use of his new pony almost only to ride to Corbyknowe in the morning and back to the castle at night.
Between Corbyknowe and the Horn, on whose sides David Barclay had a right of pasturage for the few sheep to which Steenie and Snootie were the shepherds, was a small glen, through which, on its way to join the little river with the kelpie-pot, ran a brook, along whose banks lay two narrow breadths of nice grass.
'No such stranger as you think, mother! rejoined Francis. 'That's Kirsty Barclay of Corbyknowe. 'Never, Francis! The girl rides like a lady! Francis smiled, perhaps a little triumphantly. Something like what lay in the smile the mother read in it, for it roused at once both her jealousy and her pride. Her son to fall in love with a girl that was not even a lady!
Barclay's; and as he attempted to pass between it and the steep brae, the man on the shaft caught at his bridle, made him prisoner, tied him to the cart behind, and took him to Corbyknowe. When David came home and saw him, he conjectured pretty nearly what had happened, and tired as he was set out for the castle.
There was no knowledge, he declared, that he could offer her, which the lassie from Corbyknowe would not take in like her porridge. Best thing of all for her was that, following his own predilections, he paid far more attention, in his class for English, to poetry than to prose. Colin Craig was himself no indifferent poet, and was even a master of the more recondite forms of verse.
The summer after, he paid a short visit to castle Weelset, and went one day to Corbyknowe, where he left a favourable impression upon all, which impression Kirsty had been the readier to receive because of the respect she felt for him as a student.
'Then I think I shall not go, returned Francis. 'I will come another day. 'Steenie! Steenie! cried Kirsty, 'he'll no gang the day. He maun gang hame. He says he'll come anither time. Haud ye awa on to yer hoose; I s' be wi' ye by and by. Steenie went up the hill, and Kirsty and Francis walked toward Corbyknowe.
Almost every week the friends met and spent the evening together much oftener, by and by, at Corbyknowe than at Castle Weelset. For both married soon after their return, and their wives were of different natures.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking