"Ye ill-set hyule," said she, "wait till I get ye!"
But her firstborn did not wait. On the other hand, he betook himself down the meadow with much alacrity. His mother's voice followed him.
"My lad, wait till bedtime. It'll dirl far waur then. 'Warm backs, guid bairns!' I'll learn you to make faces ahint my back."
And as Snap's master went down the meadow, the parts likely to be nocturnally affected began to burn and tingle.
And the thought of the interview she would have with her son in the evening did something to console the carrier's wife for the loss of the children to whom she had taken such a sudden liking.
The light cart went jingling on. The Netherby carrier whistled steadily as he sat on the edge of his driving-board, with his feet on the shaft. Every now and then he passed over a bag of peppermint drops to the children.
"Hae!" he said.
The Netherby carrier was a man of few words, and this was his idea of hospitality. Hugh Boy did not remember ever to have been so happy in his life. Kissing was very well in its way, though Vara had not been pleased when she heard of it. But it was nothing to sitting in a blue-hooded cart and hearing the click and jingle of brass-mounted harness. Now and then the carrier stopped at snug farm-houses, and went in to chaffer with the goodwife for her eggs. Then he left the horse in charge of Hugh Boy, and so completely won that small heart. When the carrier came out again, the farmer's wife mostly came too, and the bargaining and bantering were kept up as the cart receded from the door. Even when the blue-hooded cart was far down the loaning, a belated and forgetful goodwife would come running to some knowe-top, and from that eminence she would proceed to give further directions for commissions from the town.
"Mind ye buy the thread at Rob Heslop's—no at that upstart sieffer's at the corner, wi' his wax figgurs an' his adverteesements. I dinna haud wi' them ava'!"
For there are still uncouth and outlandish parts of the country, where the medical axiom that it is wicked and unprofessional to advertise holds good in practical commerce. Now the road toward England does not run directly through Netherby, but leaves the town a little to one side with its many spires and its warring denominations. From the outside Netherby looks like a home of ancient peace. But for all that, there were hardly two neighbour shopkeepers down all its long main street who belonged to the same religious denomination—the only exceptions being Dickson the baker and Henderson the butcher. But Henderson and Dickson did not speak to one another, having quarrelled about the singing of paraphrases in the Seceder kirk.