"It iss the growing-pains, in her old legs, and in the top of her oxters—wild, bad, ay, terrible bad."
There was a great change in the old one, it seemed to me, when I was seeing her. She would be so very wee-looking in her bed, and her spirits so low. She looked at the lotions and mixtures I had fetched with me, and then shook her head sadly, and cried in the Gaelic, "The hour of my departure is come. Hamish, Hamish, is the whisky to be not any more use?"
"There are the good words I could be saying," says she in a whisper, "but the minister is no' for them."
"Whatna good words?"
"Och, chust to be calling on the saints, St Peter and St Paul—mora, but Paul wass the lad," and she brisked up a wee at that, and whispered, "There are them I could be naming, Hamish, that St Paul would be curing. Ay, bodies and beasts I have seen the good words working a cure on, but wae's me, Hamish, I will never be hearing the cuckoo again. I am loath to part wi' this bonny place, calm and peaceful for a body's old age, and I will be missing the fine smell of the grass when it will be newly cut, and the clink of the stones on the cutting-hooks."
"Well, Betty, it will be the road we all must go at the hinder end—a fine road, Betty, from the point at the Gorton to the Island; for it was in her mind to be in the old burial-ground, and you will be lying there among your folk, on yon holy place, with the sun beating down and the cool blue sea at your feet, and all the friends sitting on the Mount of Weeping above the Brae, thrang at the greeting; and maybe on an east-wind night the spirit of ye will be hearing the rattle of halyards and the plash of the anchors, when the boats come in for shelter—and Bryde's among them. . . ."
"Bryde, Hamish—och, the limber lad. . . . Are you thinking it is all over wi' Betty, Hamish?"
"Ay, Betty."
"Well, it's no'—give me a little spirits," said she, a look of indomitable courage on her face, and pursing her lips into a thin line.
When I put the spirits into her hand she sipped a little, and coughed politely at the strength of it, and then turned herself towards me.