nch."

And so off I started at quarter past five with Souter Johnnie, the
long-haired fifteen-year-old, and our cart with the new-painted
tail-board that we only used on great days. The coach was in just as I
came, and I, like a foolish country lad, taking no heed to the years
that had passed, was looking about among the folk in the Inn front for a
slip of a girl with her petticoats just under her knees. And as I
slouched past and craned my neck there came a touch to my elbow, and
there was a lady dressed all in black standing by the steps, and I knew
that it was my cousin Edie.

I knew it, I say, and yet had she not touched me I might have passed her
a score of times and never known it. My word, if Jim Horscroft had
asked me then if she were pretty or no, I should have known how to
answer him! She was dark, much darker than is common among our border
lasses, and yet with such a faint blush of pink breaking through her
dainty colour, like the deeper flush at the heart of a sulphur rose.
Her lips were red, and kindly, and firm; and even then, at the first
glance, I saw that light of mischief and mockery that danced away at the
back of her great dark eyes. She took me then and there as though I had
been her heritage, put out her hand and plucked me. She was, as I have
said, in black, dressed in what seemed to me to be a wondrous fashion,
with a black veil pushed up from her brow.

"Ah! Jack," said she, in a mincing English fashion, that she had learned
at the boarding school. "No, no, we are rather old for that"--this
because I in my awkward fashion was pushing my foolish brown face
forward to kiss her, as I had done when I saw her last. "Just hurry up
like a good fellow and give a shilling to the conductor, who has been
exceedingly civil to me during the journey."

I flushed up red to the ears, for I had only a silver fourpenny piece
in my pocket. Never had my lack of pence weighed so heavily upon me as
just at that moment. But she read me at a glance, and there in an
instant was a little moleskin purse with a silver clasp thrust into my
hand. I paid the man, and would have given it back, but she still would
have me keep it.

"You shall be my factor, Jack," said she, laughing. "Is this our
carriage? How funny it looks! And where am I to sit?"

"On the sacking," said I.

"And how am I to get there?"

"Put your foot on the hub," said I. "I'll help you."

I sprang up and took her two little gloved