“Women, women,” she said with short breaths, “I'm thinking aye, when I see the flowers, of a man that came from these parts to Duart. He sang 'Mo Nighean Dubh' in a style was never heard before in our place, and he once brought me the scented cuckoo-brogues from Aora.”
Said the goodwife, “Aoirig, poor woman, it is not the hour for ancient old sgeuls; be thinking of a canny going.”
“Going! it was aye going with me,” said the woman in the bed. “And it was aye going when things were at their best and I was the keener for them.”
“It's the way of God, my dear, ochanie!” said one of the two Tullich sisters, putting a little salt in a plate for-the coming business.
“O God! it's the hard way, indeed. And I'm not so old as you by two or three clippings.”
“Peace, Aoirig, heart; you had your own merry times, and that's as much as most of us have claim to.”
“Merry times! merry times!” said Aoirig, humped among the bedding, her mind wandering.
Curls of the peat-reek coiled from the floor among the cabars or through the hole in the roof; a lamb ran by the door bleating for its mother, and the whistling of an uiseag high over the grass where his nest lay ran out to a thin thread of song. The sound of it troubled the dying woman, and she asked her friends to shut the door. Now and again Maisie would put a wet cloth to her lips and dry the death-sweat from her face. The goodwife was throng among chests and presses looking for sheets, shrouds, and dead-caps.
“It's a pity,” said she, “you brought no grave-clothes with you from Mull, my dear.”
“Are you grudging me yours?” asked Aoirig, coming round from wandering.