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"I'm misdoobtin sair, Peter," began Marion one morning, after a long talk with the cottar's wife, who had been telling her of Isy's having taken up her abode with the soutar, "I'm sair misdoobtin whether that hizzie hadna mair to dee nor we hae been jaloosin, wi Jamie's attack, than the mere scare he got. It seems to me he's lang been broodin ower something we ken noucht aboot."
Through his disappointment and his anger, Ralph was touched. He would have spoken, but the girl went on: "No, you do not hate me I am not worth it. You despise me, and do you think that is any better? I am only a cottar's child. I have been but a waiting-maid. But I have read how maids have loved the kings and the kings loved them. Yes, I own it. I am proud of it.
Agnes might well have thought it better he should marry the cottar's than the farmer's daughter! Anyhow she was resolved to keep an eye on the young woman so long as Cosmo was within her swoop. He was chivalrous and credulous, and who could tell what Elsie might not dare! Her refusal to be his wife did not deprive her of antecedent rights.
"It's Bell Robb, that lives in the cottage there among the bushes. I was at the parish school with her, Kate she 's just my age for we were all John Tamson's bairns in those days, and got our learning and our licks together, laird's son and cottar's daughter.
Consider the time in which he lived, when it was "as with the people, so with the priest," and the grand old life-tree of the Scottish Kirk, now green and vigorous with fresh leaves and flowers, was all crusted with foul scurf and moss, and seemed to have ceased growing, and to be crumbling down into decay; consider the terrible contradiction between faith and practice which must have met the eyes of the man, before he could write with the same pen and one as honestly as the other "The Cottar's Saturday Night," and "Holy Willie's Prayer."
"But it's hard, Jess, that money wull buy life after a', an' if Annie wes a duchess her man wudna lose her; but bein' only a puir cottar's wife, she maun dee afore the week's oot. "Gin we hed him the morn there's little doot she would be saved, for he hesna lost mair than five per cent, o' his cases, and they 'ill be puir toon's craturs, no strappin women like Annie.
"And what is this I hear," said Mistress Skirving, "that the daft young laird frae the Castle has rin' aff wi' that cottar's lassie, Jess Kissock, an' marriet her at Gretna Green. It's juist no possible." "But, grandma, it is quite true, for Jock Gordon brought the news. He saw them postin' back from Gretna wi' four horses!" "An' what says his mither, the Lady Elizabeth?"
Moreover, the conduct of Shelley in regard to his wife was, in my opinion, very mean and cruel, and the last thing that we could have expected from one who, in verse, was such a tender philanthropist, and in life was women apart the best-hearted of men. The conduct of Robert Burns, alas, too often disappoints the lover of his Cottar's Saturday Night and other moral pieces.
So in the corner of the byre, among the fragrant hay and fresh-cut clover, Jess Kissock the cottar's lass prophesied out of her wayward soul, baring her intentions to herself as perhaps her sister in boudoir hushed and perfumed might not have done.
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