"Do you keep a cow, Mr. MacNicol?" said she.
"Aw, now," said he, deprecatingly, "the young leddy will be mekkin me ashamed. It's chist Archie they'll be calling me."
"Very well, Archie—do you keep a cow?"
"I starve one," said Archie, with ironical humour.
"And a kitchen garden?"
"Aw, is it a garden? And you will not know that I wass tekken the prize for the garden, ay, more as three or four years? Well, well, now, there is no longer a prize given for the best garden, and it's a peety, too——"
"But tell me," said Käthchen, with some astonishment, "why was the prize stopped? It seems a very reasonable thing, a prize for the best kitchen garden among the crofters and fishermen—I'm quite sure Miss Stanley would give such a prize. Why was it stopped?"
Big Archie hesitated for a second or two; then he said, with a grin of confession—
"Well, now, I will tell you the God's truth, mem; for there's two ways about every story; and there's my way of it, and there's Mr. Purdie's way of it; and mebbe the one is true or the other. And this is my way of it: I wass gettin the prize—oh, yes, I will not deny that—year by year, and very proud I wass, too, of the cabbages, and the scarlet beans, and the like of that, and the thirty shullins of the prize a very good thing for me. And then kem the time the Minard crofters they were for sending an appligation to Mr. Stanley for to have the rents revised, and I put my name to the paper too; but Mr. Stanley he would do nothing at ahl—he said 'Go to Mr. Purdie.' Then Mr. Purdie he sees my name on the paper; and he says, 'Very well, there will be no more prize for the garden, and you can do without your thirty shullins.' It wass a punishment for me, that I wass putting my name on the paper. Now, mem, that is my story about the prize——"
"I think it was very shabby treatment!" Käthchen exclaimed.