"Hoot, a laddie like you is no a man. Nae beard like bristles, nae
luntin' stinkin' pipes an' a skin like my lady's--that's no a man. By my
silk hose and shoe strings, gin I get as muckle as the wind o' a man
body atween me and the Bogue road, I steek baith the inner and the outer
doors to keep awa' the waff o' the brock. Foul fa' them every yin!"

This made me laugh, indeed; but after all it did not please me greatly
to hear that I was taken for less than a man.

"Now there's Sandy," she went on, for she ever loved to talk, "he's a
great senseless sturdy o' a craitur. Yet he could get a' the wives he
wants, by just coming doon like a tod aff the hill, and takin' yin below
his oxter. An' the puir bit bleatin' hizzie wad think she likit it.
Lord! some folk tak' a man as they tak' a farm, by the acre. But no
me--no me. Na! Gin I was thinkin' o' men, the bonny ticht lad is the lad
for me; the lad wi' the cockade set in his bonnet an' a leg weel shapit;
neither bowed out frae the knees like haystack props, nor yet bent in
like a cooper ridin' on the riggin' o' a barrel."

"But what for did ye no tak' yin then?" I said, speaking through the
door of the spence as she moved about the house, ordering the
porridge-making and keeping an eye on the hen's meat as well.

It eased my heavy thought, to hear the heartsome clip of her tongue--for
all the world like a tailor's shears, brisker when it comes to the
selvage. So when Jean Gordon got in sight of the end of her sentence,
she snipped out her words with a glibness beyond any Gordon that ever I
heard of. For the Gordons are, according to proverb, slow people with
their tongues, save as they say by two and two at the canny hour of
e'en.

But never slow at morn or mirk was our Aunt Jean of Wa's by the Garpel
burn.

"It's a strange thing," she said, looking through the hall door at me,
"that you an' me can crack like twa wives that hae gotten their men out
o' the hearin'. My lad, I fear ye will creep into women's hearts because
ye make them vexed for ye. Ye hae sic innocent ways. Oh, I doot na but
it's the guile o' ye; but it was ever sae.

"Mony a mewlin', peuterin' body has great success wi' the weemen folk.
They think it's a peety that he should be so innocent, an' they tak'
haud o' the craitur, juist to keep off the ither designin' weeman. Oh,
I'm far frae denyin' that we are a pack o' silly craiturs. A'thing that
wears willy-coats; no yin muckle to better anither!"

"