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"The drap milk that the cogs winna haud may stand i' the water-pitcher afore supper-time," she continued; "and Sandy may rin owre to Gairyburn, after he comes in, and stay a' nicht wi' his mither, and get the cog, and be back next morning in time to tak oot the kye." This plan seemed at least feasible; and the farther prosecution of it was left to Nelly.
"Come ye raikin' wi' me the night and maybe ye'll be hearing some o' them," says Dan, and so when the horses were bedded and the kye fothered, we slipped through the planting and took the old peat road for it, and that I was to hear stories was all that he would tell me.
And sic part of the kye or stock as I judge it fit to keep, may be driven thither without incommodity say about Wooler, or that gate, keeping aye a shouther to the hills, and the rest may be sauld to gude profit and advantage, if we had grace weel to use and guide these gifts of the warld.
M'Cosh said, "Awa wi' ye, laddie," and "Sic havers," but after much urging owned that she knew a song which had been a favourite with her Andra. It was sung to the tune of "When the kye come hame," and was obviously a parody on that lyric, beginning: "Come a' ye Hieland pollismen That whustle through the street, An' A'll tell ye a' aboot a man That's got triple expansion feet.
You'll see yet the wee turf byres where the kye were milked, and the founds of the bochans where the old folk had their summer, with the hens and beasts about them. And many's the story I could be telling about these summer quarters when the lassies and old wives would be at the spinning.
"Ye dinna say," said my hostess, looking directly at me over her spectacles, "that Las Palomas branded that mony calves thi' year? Why, durin' ma gudeman's life we alway branded mair calves than did Mr. Lovelace. But then my husband would join the army, and I had tae depend on greasers tae do ma work, and oor kye grew up mavericks."
Weel, when it got about the clachan that Janet M'Clour was to be servant at the manse, the folk were fair mad wi' her an' him thegether; and some o' the guidwives had nae better to dae than get round her door-cheeks and chairge her wi' a' that was kent again' her, frae the sodger's bairn to John Tamson's twa kye.
Here have I been moving one for young Ardsheil, my cousin; claimed the estate under the marriage contract a forfeited estate! I told them it was nonsense: muckle they cared! And there was I cocking behind a yadvocate that liked the business as little as myself, for it was fair ruin to the pair of us a black mark, DISAFFECTED, branded on our hurdies, like folk's names upon their kye!
I had more freedom from sweethearts there at first, for the men were greatly taken up with Martha; but by the time I had been three months there I had nigh hand as many followers, as she called them, as she had herself. And followers she might well call them. I could not go out with the bairn for a walk, or out to the kye, or turn my head any way, without one or other of them being at my heels.
It has carried awa the miller's brig, and the steading o' Muckle Pirley is standing three feet in water." "You're dreaming, man," I roared back, but beside his news he held my doubts of no account. "The Retery's in flood," he went on, "and running wild through Hazel Wood; T'nowdunnie's tattie field's out o' sicht, and at the Kirkton they're fleid they've lost twa kye."
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