en I thought of that I was feeling my face smiling, and me trying
not to, as I looked at the lass.

"Hamish," she cried, "did you ever look at a lass like that before--it
is a wonder to me you are not married long ago," and then with a frown
on her face, but half laughing yet, "I ken," she cried, "she was
married already, poor Hamish--was it Belle?"

But I was thinking it was time to be putting an end to her daffing.

"Listen, my dear," said I; "I ken another likely lass."

"Oh?"

"Helen," said I.

"Likely," she cried--"likely, the likeliest lass I will ever be seeing,
Hamish--_for a sister_."

But for all that she would be jibing at Hugh and his marriage.
"Hughie," she would cry, "the fine sunny days are passing. When I get
a man I am thinking it will be half the joy of it to be out with him on
the hills and among the trees, and maybe on the sea. You will be
waiting till the rainy days come, and that will not be so lucky."

"Och," said Hugh, "I will be sitting inside with the lass I marry on
the wet days."

"Yes, Hugh; but I would be liking to be out with him in the rain and
laughing at it and loving it, because I would be with him."

"The Lord should have made you a man," said I, "for you would be
kissing your lass on some hill-top with the rain in her brown face and
clinging to her curls, Margaret."

"Brown face and curls," she cried. "I wonder. Would my lass have been
like that, Hamish, like Belle, or with a look--like Mistress Helen
maybe; but I would be loving the kissing anyway," said she.

And Helen Stockdale was often with us, whiles, to my thinking, a little
skeich[1] with Hugh, as though maybe she would rouse the temper in him,
for that she seemed to delight in, but never would she be telling us
what her man should be like.

"Husban'," she would say, with a shrug of her shoulder, "_il faut
necessaire_--one must, I think, be sensible; is it not so?--perrhaps in
anozer world one may know from the beginning," and I often wondered if
she had forgotten how something should leap up at her heart. She would
talk to Margaret about her gowns, using terms that never before had I
heard tell of, and sending as far as Edinburgh for her braws, which, I
am thinking, was a waste of good money, but I kept my thumb on that.
For the wedding was to come off at the back-end, and I would be hoping
that the weather would keep up, and the harvest be well got, wedding or
not.

And in these long summer evenings v