"My very Dearest:
"I miss you and am lonesome; for the lady is not coming about the lace-making, although she sent a command for many pounds' worth of work, and Father Michel is much pleasured by that.
"I have just had a letter from Janet McGillavorich. 'Seeing that ye write,' she says, 'ye may be interested in a plowman-poet that we have down here, whose name has made some noise in this part of the country. His name is Burns, an Ayr man, and the gentry are a' makin' much of him. Well, any time ye've the fancy, ye can look out of the spence window and see heedless Rab Burns, his eyes a-shine like twa stars, coming over the braeside, drunk as a laird, roaring out, 'How are thy servants, blessed, O Lord,' having spent the night Gude alane kens wheer. God kens and most of the neighbors, too, when you come to think about it, for the lad has a Biblical shamelessness for his misdeeds, and what he forgets to tell himself (and that's little enough) he goes home and writes out for all the parish to read. So if ye'd like a crack wi' him, just come right down, now your father's left ye, and I'll have him till dinner with you, and you can bob at each ither to your heart's content.'
"Isn't it strange, Jock, that a thing I have wanted so long should just happen by, as it were? And so I'm off for Mauchline to-morrow, with Dickenson, whose silence bespeaks a shrewish disapproval, and will write how Mr. Burns and I get on at some soon date.
"Give my love to Mr. Pitcairn, and tell him the prints are full of his new book.
"Danvers Carmichael has not been here since the time you know of, and the Duke of Borthwicke is on some sudden business to the Highlands.
"With my heart held in my hands toward you,
"Your own child,
In a green tabby velvet, laced with silver, and a huge feathered hat, Nancy set out from Stair about eight in the morning with Dame Dickenson in the Stair coach, driven by Patsy MacColl. By a change of horse at Balregal, she arrived at Mauchline just as the lamp-lighter was going his rounds, and the coach was turning by the manse when a serving-man, evidently heavy with the business, came toward the vehicle, signalling.