“Oh, aye. By Adam,” said the housekeeper coolly. “I’ve nae doot we sprang from the same stock the Bible speaks of.”
“Now will you be good?” cried Cecile, shaking a finger at her brother. “Go on, Mrs. MacCall. Tell us about your Highland home.”
“Hech! There’s very little to tell,” said the housekeeper, shaking her head, “save that ’twas a very lonely vale we lived in, and forbye in winter. Then we’d not see a strange body from end to end of the snows. And the snow came early and went late.
“If we had not a grand oat bin and a cow in the stable we bairns would oft go hungry. Why, our mother would sometimes keep us abed in stormy weather to save turf. A fire like yon,” she added, nodding toward the blazing pile in the chimney, “would have been counted a sin even in a laird’s house.”
“Ah, Mrs. MacCall,” said the lawyer, “we’re all lairds over here.”
“Aye, that can pay the price can have the luxuries. ’Tis so. But luxuries we knew naught about where I was born and bred.”
“I suppose the people right around us here—the residents of this neighborhood—have few luxuries,” Ruth said thoughtfully.
“There aren’t many neighbors, I guess,” said Neale, laughing.
“But those people living in that fishing village—and even at Coxford—never saw a tenth of the things which we consider necessary at home,” Ruth pursued.
“Suppose!” exclaimed Cecile eagerly. “Just suppose we were snowed in up here and could not get out for weeks, and nobody could get to us. I guess we would have to learn to go without luxuries! Maybe without food.”