“Can I no bide an’ help ye wi’ the butter-kirnin’ the day, Jess?” said Andra, rubbing himself briskly all over as he had seen the ploughmen do with their horses.  When he got to his bare red legs he reared and kicked out violently, calling out at the same time: 

“Wad ye then, ye tairger, tuts—­stan’ still there, ye kickin’ beast!” as though he were some fiery untamed from the desert.

Jess made a dart at him with a wet towel.

“Gang oot o’ my back kitchen wi’ yer nonsense!” she said.  Andra passaged like a strongly bitted charger to the back door, and there ran away with himself, flourishing in the air a pair of very dirty heels.  Ebie Farrish was employed over a tin basin at the stable door, making his breakfast toilet, which he always undertook, not when he shook himself out of bed in the stable loft at five o’clock, but before he went in to devour Jess with his eyes and his porridge in the ordinary way.  It was at this point that Andra Kissock, that prancing Galloway barb, breaking away from all restrictions, charged between Ebie’s legs, and overset him into his own horse-trough.  The yellow soap was in Ebie’s eyes, and before he got it out the small boy was far enough away.  The most irritating thing was that from the back kitchen came peal on peal of laughter.

“It’s surely fashionable at the sea-bathin’ to tak’ a dook [swim] in the stable-trough, nae less!”

Ebie gathered himself up savagely.  His temperature was something considerably above summer heat, yet he dared not give expression to his feelings, for his experiences in former courtships had led him to the conclusion that you cannot safely, having regard to average family prejudice, abuse the brothers of your sweetheart.  After marriage the case is believed to be different.

Winsome Charteris stood at the green gate which led out of the court-yard into the croft, as Andra was making his schoolward exit.  She had a parcel for him.  This occasioned no surprise, nor did the very particular directions as to delivery, and the dire threatenings against forgetfulness or failure in the least dismay Andra.  He was entirely accustomed to them.  From his earliest years he had heard nothing else.  He never had been reckoned as a “sure hand,” and it was only in default of a better messenger that Winsome employed him.  Then these directions were so explicit that there did not appear to be any possibility of mistake.  He had only to go to the manse and leave the parcel for Mr. Ralph Peden without a message.

So Andrew Kissock, nothing loath, promised faithfully.  He never objected to promising; that was easy.  He carried the small, neatly wrapped parcel in his hand, walking most sedately so long as Winsome’s eyes were upon him.  He was not yet old enough to be under the spell of the witchery of those eyes; but then Winsome’s eye controlled his sister Meg’s hand, and for that latter organ he had a most profound respect.