Jessy laughed.
"I don't think many of us are industrious in that way now. After all, isn't it a pity that so many of the beautiful old handicrafts are dying out? No loom, for instance, could turn out some of the things your wife makes. They're matchless."
"She has an aumrie—ye can translate it bureaufull of them. It's no longer customary to scatter them over the house. If ye mean to copy the lot, ye have a task that will take ye most a lifetime."
Mrs. Nairn's smile was half a sigh.
"There were no books and no many amusements when I was young. We sat through the long winter forenights, counting stitches, in the old gray house at Burnfoot, under the Scottish moors. That, my dear, was thirty years ago."
She shook hands with Vane as he left the house with Jessy, and standing on the stoop she watched them cross the lawn.
"I'm thinking ye'll no see so much of Jessy for the next few weeks," Nairn remarked dryly. "Has she shown ye any of yon knickknacks when she has finished them?"
His wife shook her head at him reproachfully.
"Alic," she admonished, "ye're now and then hasty in jumping at conclusions."
"Maybe. I'm no infallible, but the fault ye mention is no common in the land where we were born. I'm no denying that Jessy has enterprise, but how far it will carry her in this case is mair than I can tell."