"Hoots, toots! Och, hoch, but it is the foolish lass you will be! Poor Davy, ech, poor lad! When I would be going sparkin' the lassies, it wasn't running away they would be."
"Oh, but then you must have been so handsome and so fine, Uncle Hughie," said the girl diplomatically. "If I go up into the village will you tell mother you said I might?"
Uncle Hughie was not impervious to flattery, but he looked doubtful. Running up into the village in the evening was strictly forbidden to the younger members of the Cameron household.
"I'll jump into the pond if he comes," she declared. "Go on, Uncle Hughie. Aw, haven't you got some errand for me?"
"Well, well," said the old man indulgently, "let me see. Oh, yes, now. You might jist be stepping up to Sandy McQuarry's and tell him not to be forgetting that this is the night to go and see poor John McIntyre."
"Goody! You're a duck, Uncle Hughie. John McIntyre—isn't that the tramp you found in the hollow?"
"Yes; but indeed I will be thinking that it's no ordinary tramp he will be, whatever. Poor man, eh, eh, poor buddy. If ever the Lord would be laying His hand heavier on a man than He did on Job, that man's John McIntyre, or I will be mistaken. Ay, and it would be a fine Hielan' name, too—McIntyre."
The girl danced away up the street, dodging skilfully from tree to tree, and keeping a sharp eye on the figure climbing leisurely up the bank of the ravine.
"Don't be forgetting, Jeannie, child," the old man called after her, "not to let Sandy know the minister will be coming."
The girl nodded over her shoulder, and Uncle Hughie continued his talk to the milkstand.