Then her mood passed. “It will be you to die of it, I think,” she said, and laughed at him as she took her way to Logie.
II
Rebecca was busy in her kitchen up at Logie on the afternoon of the great snowstorm. She was thinking how wise she had been to send Causleen “just to get a bit of colour into her cheeks” when the sky began to darken, till she could scarcely have seen to ply her rolling-pin but for the ruddy hearth-glow. Now and then she turned on the great, brindled cat curled up inside the fender
“You’re a grand ’un for bringing bad weather,” she said, “and that’s why I named you Jonah. You never sit close to the fire but it means a storm.”
The cat stretched himself, and licked his handsome fur, and dozed again. It was odd to him that human folk had so little knowledge of weather.
“Just Jonah, you—and an idle vagabones at that I’ve a mind to sweep you out of my kitchen with the thick end of a besom.”
Jonah heard the threat without disturbance. He knew the way of Rebecca’s weather, too.
She went on with her pastry-making. The Master had a big body to be filled, and a sweet tooth for pastry after he’d had his fill of strong meats. Men were all alike. Feed ’em and fill ’em, and they’d be lambs about a house. And Rebecca never guessed why her hand was light at the work—and the pastry light, by that token. She had never a man to care for, except Hardcastle of Logie, and it was a joy to wear herself to the bone for him.
The wind got up and snarled, as it snarled by the Strith when Hardcastle and Causleen listened to the vanguard of the storm piping low through Logie Wood. And then there came the crying of the wild-geese, winging high above the house.
Rebecca dropped her rolling-pin, and went out into the wind-gusts and the greying light. She was at prayer, of her own sort.