"There it is, the copper penny," he cried, with a laugh, though there were tears in his eyes, showing me the end of his watch-fob from which the bit of money hung.
"The dear little thing had thought I really had not a penny in the world and had brought her only one to sacrifice upon the altar of our friendship. Oh, Jock Stair," and the union between us spoke in the words, "how are you and I to raise up a soul like this and keep it unspotted from the world?"
As I stated at the beginning of my story, I have no intention of saying a word of Nancy's charities or of her verse-making save when necessary for the clearness of my tale, but I find the time has now come when some mention of the first must be made. It could be judged from the anecdote already told, of her bringing "her people" to Stair, that she formed strong attachments; but as time went by I found that this affection extended to almost everything that lived. She was a lawless little body, going around the grounds at her own pleasure, and bringing back some living thing at every expedition to be cared for at the house. These findings included lame dogs, rabbits, cats, and finally she came into the library, breathless:
"I got a boy to-day, Jock," she said, exactly as I might have stated I had caught a fish. "A boy," she repeated, every feature in her face alight; "Father Michel's got him."
"For Heaven's sake, Nancy," I inquired, "what do you intend to do with him?"
"Keep him," she answered.
Going down with her to inspect this new treasure, I found a lad eight or ten years of age, very sickly, with a hump upon his back, and of a notably unprepossessing appearance, carrying a fiddle, and evidently forsaken by some strolling player. She had set her mind upon his staying, and he stayed; but finding the trouble her accumulated possessions were giving at Stair, she showed me within the week a bit of her power to get her own way; a thought which afterward bore such large results for the whole of Scotland.
The former lord, my honored father, had erected under some trees far off by the burn water several small stone houses for the servants which my beautiful Irish mother brought with her from her own country. Because my bachelor ways had needed little service these dwellings had gradually fallen into disuse and disrepair, the few serving people I required finding abundant lodgment in the attic chambers. These tiny houses, built of gray stone, with ivy growing around the windows, had taken Nancy's fancy from the instant her eyes first lighted on them.
The evening before her sixth birthday, as we stood together watching the sun go down, a thought for the following day came to me.
"And what do you want for your birthday, Little Flower!" I asked.