So saying, Jock clattered away with his water-pails, muttering to himself.

Meg Kissock came out again to sit down on her milking-stool under the westward window, within which was Winsome Charteris, reading her book unseen by the last glow of the red west.

Jess and Saunders Mowdiewort had fallen silent.  Jess had said her say, and did not intend to exert herself to entertain her sister’s admirer.  Jess was said to look not unkindly on Ebie Farrish, the younger ploughman who had recently come to Craig Ronald from one of the farms at the “laigh” end of the parish.  Ebie had also, it was said, with better authority, a hanging eye to Jess, who had the greater reason to be kind to him, that he was the first since her return from England who had escaped the more bravura attractions of her sister.

“Can ye no find a seat guid eneuch to sit doon on, cuif?” inquired Meg with quite as polite an intention as though she had said, “Be so kind as to take a seat.”  The cuif, who had been uneasily balancing himself first on one foot and then on the other, and apologetically passing his hand over the sleek side of his head which was not covered by the bonnet, replied gratefully: 

“’Deed I wull that, Meg, since ye are sae pressin’.”

He went to the end of the milk-house, selected a small tub used for washing the dishes of red earthenware and other domestic small deer, turned it upside down, and seated himself as near to Meg as he dared.  Then he tried to think what it was he had intended to say to her, but the words somehow would not now come at call.  Before long he hitched his seat a little nearer, as though his present position was not quite comfortable.

But Meg checked him sharply.

“Keep yer distance, cuif,” she said; “ye smell o’ the muils” [churchyard earth].

“Na, na, Meg, ye ken brawly I haena been howkin’ [digging] since Setterday fortnicht, when I burriet Tarn Rogerson’s wife’s guid-brither’s auntie, that leeved grainin’ an’ deein’ a’ her life wi’ the rheumatics an’ wame disease, an’ died at the last o’ eatin’ swine’s cheek an’ guid Cheddar cheese thegither at Sandy Mulquharchar’s pig-killin’.”

“Noo, cuif,” said Meg, with an accent of warning in her voice, “gin ye dinna let alane deevin’ [deafening] us wi’ yer kirkyaird clavers, ye’ll no sit lang on my byne” [tub].

From the end of the peat-stack, out of the dark hole made by the excavation of last winter’s stock of fuel, came the voice of Jock Gordon, singing: 

    “The deil he sat on the high lumtap,
    Hech how, black an’ reeky! 
    Gang yer ways and drink yer drap,
    Ye’ll need it a’ whan ye come to stap
    in my hole sae black an’ reeky, O! 
    Hech how, black an’ reeky!

    “Hieland kilt an’ Lawland hose,
    Parritch-fed an’ reared on brose,
    Ye’ll drink nae drap whan ye come tae stap
    in my hole sae black an’ reeky, O! 
    Hech how, black an’ reeky!”