‘Some nicht ye’ll lat me bide oot wi’ ye a’ nicht? I wud sair like it, Steenie!’
‘Ye sall, Kirsty; but it maun be some nicht ye hae sleepit a’ day.’
‘Eh, but I cudna do that, tried I ever sae hard!’
‘Ye cud lie i’ yer bed ony gait, and mak the best o’ ’t! Ye hae naebody, I ken, to gar you sleep!’
They went all the rest of the way talking thus, and Kirsty’s heart grew lighter, for she seemed to get a little nearer to her brother. He had been her live doll and idol ever since his mother laid him in her arms when she was little more than three years old. For though Steenie was nearly a year older than Kirsty, she was at that time so much bigger that she was able, not indeed to carry him, but to nurse him on her knees. She thought herself the elder of the two until she was about ten, by which time she could not remember any beginning to her carrying of him. About the same time, however, he began to grow much faster, and she found before long that only upon her back could she carry him any distance.
The discovery that he was the elder somehow gave a fresh impulse to her love and devotion, and intensified her pitiful tenderness. Kirsty’s was indeed a heart in which the whole unhappy world might have sought and found shelter. She had the notion, notwithstanding, that she was harder-hearted than most, and therefore better able to do things that were right but not pleasant.
CHAPTER VII
CORBYKNOWE
‘Ye’ll come in and say a word to mother, Steenie?’ said Kirsty, as they came near the door of the house.
It was a long, low building, with a narrow paving in front from end to end, of stones cast up by the plough. Its walls, but one story high, rough-cast and white-washed, shone dim in the twilight. Under a thick projecting thatch the door stood wide open, and from the kitchen, whose door was also open, came the light of a peat-fire and a fish-oil-lamp. Throughout the summer Steenie was seldom in the house an hour of the twenty-four, and now he hesitated to enter. In the winter he would keep about it a good part of the day, and was generally indoors the greater part of the night, but by no means always.
While he hesitated, his mother appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. She was a tall, fine-looking woman, with soft gray eyes, and an expression of form and features which left Kirsty accounted for.