"Then I'll no' gang. I wadna like to crood Mary."
"Dear mother, there's plenty of room."
"Ay, ay, but ye ken Mary doesna like tae sit wi' her back tae the horse."
That sort of thing was always happening. One day the old lady came home from a round of visits, much perturbed in mind and body. The sandy hair I inherited, and have largely lost, does not show the gray with which it is mixed, and so light and wiry is she one finds it difficult to remember my mother's seventy years. She is a small woman, but her personality is sufficiently large for the ripples to be felt throughout the household when its surface is disturbed.
"What dae ye think I've been hearin'?" she cried, finding me alone in the nursery on the sofa, and helpless in her hands.
"I can't imagine, mother. You generally have something spicy to tell us after you've been calling on the MacTavishes."
"Dae ye ken 'at yon hizzy ye've ta'en intill yer hoose ca's hersel' Mary Gemmell?"
"Oh, well, what's in a name?"
"I wonner tae hear ye, Davvit! What wad yer faither hae thocht aboot it, or yer gran'faither? Gie'n the femly name, that's come doon unspotted frae ae generation till anither, tae a funnlin' aff the streets! Ou, ay! I micht 'a' kent what wad happen when I h'ard tell o' ye bein' merrit till an Amerrican."
"Hold up there, mother. You're just twenty years too late in raking up that story. If it suits me and Belle to have that girl called 'Mary Gemmell,' Mary Gemmell she shall be, if it turns all Scotland head over heels into the North Sea."