"The kitchen wenches' conversation will be doing finely for me," says
I, a little put out.
"It is none such a bad saying either, Hamish. This is it," said she, "and there's no great occasion to be in a black mood with a lass—
"A clean want, Hamish, is better than a dirty breakfast. That's what the lassies say, whiles, in the kitchen."
CHAPTER XXVII.
MARGARET McBRIDE KISSES HELEN.
It would always be a great pleasure for me to be watching Dan, the way he would be toiling against the heather, and draining in the moss in the seasons, and rearing his horses, for his great war-horse sired many foals, and maybe to this day you will see the traces of that breed in the little crofts where the horses and cattle beasts are as long bred as the names of the folk that own them. They were black for the most part, the breed of the war-horse, and very proud in their bearing, but bigger beasts than the native breed, and not so much cow-hocked (although that is a hardy sign), nor so scroggy at the hoof—ay, and they would trot for evermore. You will maybe hear to this day a farmer saying of a mare of that strain: "She is one of the old origineels." But whiles the twenty years of his soldiering would come over the man, and ye would be hearing him at his camp-songs in the French language, and there would come a prideful swing to his body, and a quick way of speech, and an overbearing look, as though maybe the common work was galling, and the sheep and beasts nothing better than for boiling in a soldier's camp-kettle. These times would maybe be after a fair or a wedding, and indeed he was not to be interfered with except by his own native folk, for he would ride at a ganger or an exciseman for the pleasure of seeing them run like dafties when the mood was on him—or a drop too much in him—and for no ill-nature whatever; but it was fearsome to see the big black horse stretch to the gallop, with flying mane and wicked eye a-rolling. But Belle could tame her man, and she kent his every mood and his every look. It was droll and laughable too to see her hand his little son to Dan (for old Betty was right: there was another son to Belle—not a "scroosch," as the old one said, but one boy, and they put Hamish on him for a name: Hamish Og they called him, and he ruled that house).
"Here is your son to be holding for a little, my man," that dark woman
Belle would be saying, and Dan, in his big moods, would be answering—
"Have I not held the sword in my hand for twenty years, and what were weans to me in these days?"
"Very little—I am hoping, Dan," his wife would answer with a straight dark look, and the beginning of a laugh in her eyes, for always Dan would be remembering the first boy this wife of his had reared in those years, and a kind of shame would come over him, and Belle would laugh for that she had her man back, and her laughter was a thing to gladden the heart, and Dan would never be tired of hearing it. So the big mood would pass, and the hard-fighting farmer would be at work again; but whiles, after the laughing, the old longing, half-fierce look would be in Belle's eyes, and I kent it was not Dan or Hamish Og she was thinking of, but her first-born, Bryde.
And as the years wore on there was another thing to be watching in Belle. She would take the wean in a shawl swathed round her limber figure, and only the little head of him outside of it, and his eyes seeing things, like a young bird, and she would walk to the rise where old John of Scaurdale's man waved the lanthorn to McGilp on the night when I chased the deer, and there she would stand for long, looking seaward and crooning to the wean. This she would be doing every night before the gloaming.