"Hamish," said the lass, "ye never lied to me before."
A halflin lad took the horses and we came to the house, and there was Belle to meet us, smiling to Margaret, and her eyes wandering to where her son was at the ploughing.
Now it was a droll thing to me to watch these two, for Margaret McBride had the pride of her mother, and there were many times when she would be very haughty, and yet in this moorland farmhouse she would be all softness and the quiet laughter of gladness, and talking very wisely to Belle about homely things. And I would often be laughing at Margaret and her talk of milk, and fowls, and calves, and lambs, but she would be very serious.
"A woman should be knowing these things, Hamish," she would say.
But Belle was the slave of Margaret since the days when Hugh and Bryde and the little wild lass would be playing in the heather, and climbing for jackdaw's eggs or young rock-pigeons in Dun Dubh. But that day Margaret was beside old Betty, and making her comfortable in the chair by the fire of red peats.
"Will you be very wise, old Betty?" said she, looking down on the old one.
"Yess, yess, Betty has the wisdom, and Betty kens the secrets o' the hill folks, but ye will not be needing to ken the secrets, for will you not be keeping the lads away from ye with a stick. Na, na, ye will not be needing the love secret."
"My motherless lass!" cried Margaret, with a droll laugh, "and is there a secret way of it?"
"Yess, yess, a very goot way, mo leanabh; you will chust be scraping a little from the white of your nail and putting it in his dram, yess, and he will be yours through all the worlds. . . ."
"But what," said I, "if he'll not be taking a dram?"