“I hope,” said I dubiously, “that Mrs Mac-Pherson will appreciate it.”
“She’s the very yin that will,” he assured me as he put it in his pocket. “She’s like mysel’; she canna play the piano, but she has better gifts,—she has the fear o’ God and a sense o’ humour. You come up the morn’s nicht at eight, afore the post comes, and ye’ll see the ploy when she gets her valenteen. I’ll be slippin’ oot and postin’t in the forenoon. Though a young lassie canna get her valenteens ower early in the mornin’, a mairried wife’s’ll dae very weel efter her wark’s done for the day.”
“It’s yersel’?” said Mrs MacPherson when I went to her door. “Come awa’ in. I kent there was a stranger comin’,—though indeed I wadna be ca’in’ you a stranger,—for there was a stranger on the ribs o’ the grate this mornin’, and a knife fell aff the table when we were at oor tea.”
“Ay, and hoo knocked it aff deeliberate?” interposed her husband, rising to welcome me. “Oh, she’s the sly yin. She’s that fond to see folk come aboot the hoose she whiles knocks a knife aff the table to see if it’ll bring them.”
“Oh, Erchie MacPherson!” cried his wife.
“I’m no blamin’ ye,” he went on; “I ken I’m gey dreich company for onybody. I havena a heid for mindin’ ony scandal aboot the folk we ken, and I canna understaund politics noo that Gledstone’s no’ to the fore, and I danna sing, or play a tune on ony thing.”
“Listen to him!” cried Jinnet. “Isn’t he the awfu’ man? Did ye ever hear the like o’ him for nonsense?”
The kettle was on the fire: I knew from experience that it had been put there when my knock came to the door, for so the good lady’s hospitality always manifested itself, so that her kettle was off and on the fire a score of times a-day, ready to be brought to the boil if it was a visitor who knocked, and not a beggar or a pedlar of pipeclay.
“Tak’ a watter biscuit,” Jinnet pressed me as we sat at the table; “they’re awfu’ nice wi’ saut butter.”
“Hae ye nae syrup to put on them?” asked her husband with a sly glance.