“I wish to know the way to Fairy Knowe.”
“Mammie, mammie,” exclaimed the little rustic, running towards the door of the hut, “come out and speak to the gentleman.”
Her mother appeared,—a handsome young country-woman, to whose features, originally sly and espiegle in expression, matrimony had given that decent matronly air which peculiarly marks the peasant’s wife of Scotland. She had an infant in one arm, and with the other she smoothed down her apron, to which hung a chubby child of two years old. The elder girl, whom the traveller had first seen, fell back behind her mother as soon as she appeared, and kept that station, occasionally peeping out to look at the stranger.
“What was your pleasure, sir?” said the woman, with an air of respectful breeding not quite common in her rank of life, but without anything resembling forwardness.
The stranger looked at her with great earnestness for a moment, and then replied, “I am seeking a place called Fairy Knowe, and a man called Cuthbert Headrigg. You can probably direct me to him?”
“It’s my gudeman, sir,” said the young woman, with a smile of welcome. “Will you alight, sir, and come into our puir dwelling?—Cuddie, Cuddie,”—a white-headed rogue of four years appeared at the door of the hut—“rin awa, my bonny man, and tell your father a gentleman wants him. Or, stay,—Jenny, ye’ll hae mair sense: rin ye awa and tell him; he’s down at the Four-acres Park.—Winna ye light down and bide a blink, sir? Or would ye take a mouthfu’ o’ bread and cheese, or a drink o’ ale, till our gudeman comes. It’s gude ale, though I shouldna say sae that brews it; but ploughmanlads work hard, and maun hae something to keep their hearts abune by ordinar, sae I aye pit a gude gowpin o’ maut to the browst.”
As the stranger declined her courteous offers, Cuddie, the reader’s old acquaintance, made his appearance in person. His countenance still presented the same mixture of apparent dulness with occasional sparkles, which indicated the craft so often found in the clouted shoe. He looked on the rider as on one whom he never had before seen, and, like his daughter and wife, opened the conversation with the regular query, “What’s your wull wi’ me, sir?”
“I have a curiosity to ask some questions about this country,” said the traveller, “and I was directed to you as an intelligent man who can answer them.”
“Nae doubt, sir,” said Cuddie, after a moment’s hesitation. “But I would first like to ken what sort of questions they are. I hae had sae mony questions speered at me in my day, and in sic queer ways, that if ye kend a’, ye wadna wonder at my jalousing a’ thing about them. My mother gar ’d me learn the Single Carritch, whilk was a great vex; then I behoved to learn about my godfathers and godmothers to please the auld leddy; and whiles I jumbled them thegether and pleased nane o’ them; and when I cam to man’s yestate, cam another kind o’ questioning in fashion that I liked waur than Effectual Calling; and the ‘did promise and vow’ of the tape were yokit to the end o’ the tother. Sae ye see, sir, I aye like to hear questions asked befor I answer them.”
“You have nothing to apprehend from mine, my good friend; they only relate to the state of the country.”