One day when I came in from the sheep, there was my father sitting with a letter in his hands, which was a very rare thing with us, except when the factor wrote for the rent.  Then as I came nearer to him I saw that he was crying, and I stood staring, for I had always thought that it was not a thing that a man could do.  I can see him now, for he had so deep a crease across his brown cheek that no tear could pass it, but must trickle away sideways and so down to his ear, hopping off on to the sheet of paper.  My mother sat beside him and stroked his hands like she did the cat’s back when she would soothe it.

“Aye, Jeannie,” said he, “poor Willie’s gone.  It’s from the lawyer, and it was sudden or they’d ha’ sent word of it.  Carbuncle, he says, and a flush o’ blood to the head.”

“Ah! well, his trouble’s over,” said my mother.

My father rubbed his ears with the tablecloth.

“He’s left a’ his savings to his lassie,” said he, “and by gom if she’s not changed from what she promised to be she’ll soon gar them flee.  You mind what she said of weak tea under this very roof, and it at seven shillings the pound!”

My mother shook her head, and looked up at the flitches of bacon that hung from the ceiling.

“He doesn’t say how much, but she’ll have enough and to spare, he says.  And she’s to come and bide with us, for that was his last wish.”

“To pay for her keep!” cried my mother sharply.  I was sorry that she should have spoken of money at that moment, but then if she had not been sharp we would all have been on the roadside in a twelvemonth.

“Aye, she’ll pay, and she’s coming this very day.  Jock lad, I’ll want you to drive to Ayton and meet the evening coach.  Your Cousin Edie will be in it, and you can fetch her over to West Inch.”

And so off I started at quarter past five with Souter Johnnie, the long-haired fifteen-year-old, and our cart with the new-painted tail-board that we only used on great days.  The coach was in just as I came, and I, like a foolish country lad, taking no heed to the years that had passed, was looking about among the folk in the Inn front for a slip of a girl with her petticoats just under her knees.  And as I slouched past and craned my neck there came a touch to my elbow, and there was a lady dressed all in black standing by the steps, and I knew that it was my cousin Edie.

I knew it, I say, and yet had she not touched me I might have passed her a score of times and never known it.  My word, if Jim Horscroft had asked me then if she were pretty or no, I should have known how to answer him!  She was dark, much darker than is common among our border lasses, and yet with such a faint blush of pink breaking through her dainty colour, like the deeper flush at the heart of a sulphur rose.  Her lips were red, and kindly, and firm; and even then, at the first glance, I saw that light of mischief and mockery that danced away at the back of her great dark eyes.  She took me then and there as though I had been her heritage, put out her hand and plucked me.  She was, as I have said, in black, dressed in what seemed to me to be a wondrous fashion, with a black veil pushed up from her brow.