He was as unmoved, however, at the end of my narration as at the beginning of it.
"She's no a woman yet; she's just a wee bit bairn; but as soon as she begins to sigh for joes and bawbees she'll be just like the rest. They're all of them elemental things," he said with conviction, "and ye can't change their natures any more than ye can stop fire from burning."
Later he began to alter his opinion of her, however, and it fell, I think, largely through his own vanity. I have told of the scene in the court which resulted in Jeanie Henderlin and her two children coming to be Burn-folk, and from that time Nancy would turn back every little while to her interest in the law. There were some compilations of celebrated cases among my books, and for a while her talk ran of the trials for murder and poisoning and the scuttling of ships, until I wondered where the thing would lead. Part of these accounts were briefed; others contained the evidence entire, indictments, questions and answers, the judges' instructions, and the verdict rendered, all with much legal verbiage and twisting.
One night, in her twelfth year, she asked Hugh Pitcairn some questions concerning a poison case, which happened to be one he had studied with interest himself, and he denounced the verdict as one unlawful and obtained by sentiment rather than from the evidence itself, promising to send another book to her containing his own view of the matter. Here was a ground in which a friendship with Hugh could take firm root, and from that time on there were heavy volumes coming to Nancy from the great barrister constantly, and to hear her quizzed by him concerning the law on certain points was one of the most humorous bits of my life. I never rightly understood this trend of Nancy's mind. In her talks with me I found it was never to discover the naked law on a point, but how punishment might be evaded, that interested her. "If he'd said this," or "had he left that unsaid," or "if the defense had proven," was the burden of her remarks, and I thought at times that if Hugh saw the thing as I did he would find at bottom of all her lawing only a woman's desire to discover how people could be got out of trouble, whether deserving punishment or not.
In her fifteenth year, when I was obliged to go to London concerning the Forfeited Estates, I had her with me; but even then the lawing between Pitcairn and herself did not cease, for packets passed between them constantly, and soon after our return, Nancy's being eighteen at the time, I found that she had wrought a change in him, as well as in the rest of us.
"Jock Stair," he said to me one night, as though addressing a jury, "I told you once that it was impossible to civilize a woman, that all education just went over their heads and affected their natures none at all; that it was beyond them to conceive an abstract right or wrong; that I had never seen one who had a jot of public spirit. I feel a sense of duty in telling you I've changed. I have seen one. It's your daughter, Nancy Stair!"
Chapter VIII
THE DAFT DAYS
We came back to Scotland in July, 1786, and one day, late in the month, Nancy came in to tell me that she intended having a birthday party that same evening.