e laid
it aside, and we were both silent for a time.

At length Turkey spoke.

"You've seen my mother, Ranald."

"Yes, Turkey."

"She's all I've got to look after."

"I haven't got any mother to look after, Turkey."

"No. You've a father to look after you. I must do it, you know. My
father wasn't over good to my mother. He used to get drunk sometimes,
and then he was very rough with her. I must make it up to her as well
as I can. She's not well off, Ranald."

"Isn't she, Turkey?"

"No. She works very hard at her spinning, and no one spins better than
my mother. How could they? But it's very poor pay, you know, and
she'll be getting old by and by."

"Not to-morrow, Turkey."

"No, not to-morrow, nor the day after," said Turkey, looking up with
some surprise to see what I meant by the remark.

He then discovered that my eyes had led my thoughts astray, and that
what he had been saying about his mother had got no farther than into
my ears. For on the opposite side of the stream, on the grass, like a
shepherdess in an old picture, sat a young girl, about my own age, in
the midst of a crowded colony of daisies and white clover, knitting so
that her needles went as fast as Kirsty's, and were nearly as
invisible as the thing with the hooked teeth in it that looked so
dangerous and ran itself out of sight upon Turkey's mother's
spinning-wheel. A little way from her was a fine cow feeding, with a
long iron chain dragging after her. The girl was too far off for me to
see her face very distinctly; but something in her shape, her posture,
and the hang of her head, I do not know what, had attracted me.

"Oh! there's Elsie Duff," said Turkey, himself forgetting his mother
in the sight--"with her granny's cow! I didn't know she was coming
here to-day."

[Illustration]

"How is it," I asked, "that she is feeding her on old James Joss's
land?"

"Oh! they're very good to Elsie, you see. Nobody cares much about her
grandmother; but Elsie's not her grandmother, and although the cow
belongs to the old woman, yet for Elsie's sake, this one here and that
one there gives her a bite for it--that's a day's feed generally. If
you look at the cow, you'll see she's not like one that feeds by the
roadsides. She's as plump as needful, and has a good udderful of milk
besides."

"I'll run down and tell her she may bring the cow into this field
to-morrow," I said, rising.

"I would if it were _mine_" said Turkey, in a marked tone