The little girl departed. Granny came in to talk about her when she had gone.
"Who teaches her such good English?" asked Rowena. "I pictured her a little heathen savage, brought up in a crofter's hut."
"Ah, indeed and indeed no! Anne Macdonald was a schoolmistress before she took service with the laird and his lady, a most superior young woman, and she took charge of the bairn from her birth. Ye see Angus have been the laird's gillie all his life for he was his father's gillie before him, an' Angus an' Anne made a match of it, an' then Angus got the sma' farm ower to Barncrassie, an' when the laird's leddy were in toon the bairn mad' her home wi' 'em. An' then Mrs. Macdonald died, an' the bairn have stayed wi' Anne ever since. She've paid a mighty lot o' attention to Mysie's manners and talk, an' in mony ways the little lassie has been bred more carefully than even wi' her own people—for the laird be a dour silent mon, an' when he's doon for a wee bit time has just shut himsel' awa' from all folk, an' come an' gone like a shadow on the wall!"
"And has he never troubled to see his child? What an unnatural father!"
Granny only shook her head hopelessly, and the conversation ended. Rowena began to look forward to seeing her small visitor again.
[CHAPTER III]
MYSIE MACDONALD
"O blessed vision, happy child,
Thou art so exquisitely wild,
I thought of thee with many fears
Of what might be thy lot in future years."
Wordsworth.
THREE days afterwards, Mysie made her appearance again.
Rowena found her very good company. She was full of Highland folk-lore and superstition; and was a combination of childish trust in the improbable, and old-fashioned sagacity and shrewdness.