Well, the other pair of horses were worked and seen to equally well by the farmer’s only son, while the only daughter, a blithe and intelligent lassie of sixteen, assisted her mother and Jeannie with the household work, the making of butter and cheese, cooking and cleaning. Jeannie was always cheerful, always merry, never frivolous. Like every one else in this book, she is a character from the real life, and while writing about her, I cannot possibly banish from my mind a bonnie old Scottish song, one verse of which I may be allowed to give, because it paints Jeannie herself. It is called—
THE NAMELESS LASSIE.
There’s nane may ever guess or tell
My bonnie lassie’s name;
There’s nane may ken the humble cot
My lassie ca’s her hame.
Yet, though my lassie’s nameless,
Her kin o’ low degree,
Her heart is warm, her thoughts are pure,
And oh! she’s dear to me!
The farm-steading of Kilbuie lay fully four miles back from the river, into the interior of the wild and beautiful country, a country but little known to the wandering Englishman, but romantic enough in all conscience, and rendered famous if only from the fact that here Robert the Bruce lay long in hiding before he made his grand and successful attempt to secure his kingdom and free his land from the tyranny of the Saxon invader. It is a country of hills and dells, of wood and water, lochs and roaring streams; a country almost every acre of which has been in days long gone by a battle-field; and hardly can you walk a mile here without stumbling upon the ruins of some feudal castle. Could these strongholds but speak, what tales we should have to listen to—tales that would cause our very heart’s blood to tingle, and nervous cold to run down our spines!
Although four miles from the river and about the same distance from a railway station, the farm was not over a quarter of a mile from a main road, being connected therewith by a level straight road, with a ditch at each side, called the “long loanings.” On each side the fields, level and green, were spread out, and all were surrounded by sturdy stone fences called dikes. A dike in England means a ditch, in Scotland it signifies a wall of loose stones—that is, stones built up without any lime.
The fields around Kilbuie were not, however, all level. By no means. There were hills on the farm so steep that it taxed all the ingenuity of the men to plough or harrow them.
A word about the steading itself. There was in front the square-built unpretentious square house, with bow windows below, and a good old-fashioned garden in front, a garden in which grew vegetables of all kinds, bar potatoes, and whose borders round about were filled with gooseberry and rose trees time about, with fine old-fashioned flowers between. Behind the house was the steading proper, and which was similar to those we see in England, with one most important exception, a dirty dunghill did not lie between the living house and the cattle houses. This is an unsanitary arrangement never beheld in Scotland. Such places are kept well away from the stable, byre, and dwelling-house.
It spoke well, I think, for Farmer M‘Crae’s kindliness of heart and manner, that none of his servants had left him for the last four years, nor were thinking of leaving him even now. You see, he never was a tyrant, and he as often as not took Jamie into consultation before carrying out any plan or beginning any new piece of work. Farmer M‘Crae was not much over forty, though his son was eighteen. He had married very young, but it seems never had had reason to repent it, for he was always happy and cheerful, even in situations where other men might have been much cast down, as during his recent terrible losses of cattle and corn. There were just two things, however, that Kilbuie insisted on: one was the presence of all the servants and family in the best room every evening to family worship; a chapter read from the Book of Books; a prayer and short dissertation from Norman Macleod’s book. That was all, short and simple, and every one felt the better for it. The son’s name was simple enough in all conscience. It was Sandie.
There were few more handsome lads in all the parish round than Sandie. You might have taken him to be two-and-twenty from his build and general deportment, and from the incipient whisker on his cheek and hair on his upper lip. His cheeks and lips were the rosiest ever seen, while his very blue eyes sparkled with ruddy health. Yet had he many ways that might have been called almost childish.
That evening, for instance, before the accident to the minister’s trap, Sandie entered the best room, where, near to the fire—the evenings are cold even in May in the far north of Scotland—his gentle mother sat knitting.