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Updated: June 6, 2025
The family followed him into the parlour and seated themselves stiffly around the walls. Kirsty McDuff, the servant girl, and Jimmie Bailey, the chore boy, entered also a few minutes later. Johnstone as they entered, and that Janet and the Bailey boy were further provided with catechisms.
She knew what he meant, and was silent. 'Then Kirsty went to Edinburgh, to sir Haco Macintosh, and with his assistance brought me to my right mind. If it were not for Kirsty, I should be in my grave, or wandering the earth a maniac. Even alive and well as I am, I should not be with you now had she not shown me my duty' 'I thought as much!
His Aunt Kirsty could not understand or explain his reluctance to attend the public services, nor his unwillingness to appear in the house on the occasion of the minister's visits. "He is busy with the fences and about the stables preparing for the spring's work," she said; "but, indeed, he is very queer whatever, and I cannot make him out at all." Macdonald Dubh himself said nothing.
He always sought her when he wanted to sleep in the daytime, but he was gradually growing quieter in his mind, and, Kirsty had reason to think, slept a good deal more at night. But the better he grew the more had he the look of one expecting something; and Kirsty often heard him saying to himself 'It's comin! it's comin!
She never called him the master, but always the minister. She was a great favourite with my father, and he always behaved as a visitor in her house. "Well, Kirsty," he said, after the first salutations were over, "have you any objection to turn schoolmistress?" "I should make a poor hand at that," she answered, with a smile to me which showed she guessed what my father wanted.
This was the reason of a friendly duel between that vivacious woman Kirsty Howieson, Jean Cochrane's maid and humble friend, and that hard-headed and far-seeing man of Angus, Jock Grimond, Claverhouse's servant and only too loyal clansman.
When she turned into the kitchen, it was a great relief; but it did not last long, for she came out again in a moment, searching like a hound. She was taller than Kirsty, and by standing on her tiptoes could have looked right down into the barrel. She was approaching it with that intent those eyes were about to overshadow us with their baleful light.
Had Kirsty been backed by the child's father, she might have made something of her; but it grew more and more painful to think of her future, when her self-constituted guardian should have lost what influence she had over her. Phemy was rather afraid of Steenie. Her sunny nature shrank from the shadow, as of a wall, in which Steenie appeared to her always to stand.
Kirsty always enjoyed the winter heartily. For one thing, it roused her poetic faculty oh, how different in its outcome from Phemy's! far more than the summer. That very afternoon, leaving Steenie with his mother, she paid a visit to the weem, and there, in the heart of the earth, made the following little song, addressed to the sky-soaring lark:
I remember well how I saw everything double that day, and found it at first very amusing. Kirsty set me down on a plaid in the grass, and the next moment, Turkey, looking awfully big, and portentously healthy, stood by my side. I wish I might give the conversation in the dialect of my native country, for it loses much in translation; but I have promised, and I will keep my promise.
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