"Hoots, haivers!" said the wife again. She cannot bide not being answered. Even if she has a grooin' in her back, and remarks "Ateeshoo-oo!" ye are bound for the sake of peace to put the question, "What ails ye, guidwife?"
"I'll never believe that the minister smokes. He never has the gliff o' it aboot him when he comes here."
"That's the cunnin' o' the body," said I. "He kens wha he's comin' to see, an' he juist cuittles ye till ye gang aboot the hoose like Pussy Bawdrons that has been strokit afore the fire, wi' your tail wavin' owre your back."
"Think shame o' yoursel', Saunders M'Quhirr—you an elder and a man on in years, to speak that gate."
"Gae wa' wi' ye, Mary M'Quhirr," I said. "Do ye think me sae auld? There was but forty-aught hours and twenty meenits atween oor first scraichs in this warld. That's no' aneuch to set ye up to sic an extent, that ye can afford to gang aboot the hoose castin' up my age to me. There's mony an aulder man lookin' for his second wife."
And with that, before my wife had time to think on a rouser of a reply (I saw it in her eye, but it had not time to come away), Thomas Thackanraip hirpled in. Thomas came from Ayrshire near forty years since, and has been called Tammock the Ayrshireman ever since. He was now a hearty-like man with a cottage of his own, and a cheery way with him that made him a welcome guest at all the neighbouring farmhouses, as he was at ours. The humours of Tammock were often the latest thing in the countryside. He was not in the least averse to a joke against himself, and that, I think, was the reason of a good deal of his popularity. He went generally with his hand in the small of his back, as if he were keeping the machinery in position while he walked. But he had a curious young-like way with him for so old a man, and was for ever _pook-pook_ing at the lasses wherever he went.
"Guid e'en to ye, mistress; hoo's a' at Drumquhat the nicht?" says
Tammock.
"Come your ways by, an' tak' a seat by the fire, Tammock; it's no' a kindly nicht for auld banes," says the wife.
"Ay, guidwife, 'deed and I sympathise wi' ye," says Tammock. "It's what we maun a' come to some day."
"Doitered auld body!" exclaimed my wife, "did ye think I was meanin' mysel'?"