'I carena—I carena!' she said; for what had trivial details of history to do with a jovial picnic in Campsie Glen? 'Come, Ronald, lad, tune up! Hang the Harmony Club!—give us a song in the open air!'
'Here goes, then—
'It was about the Martinmas time,
And a gay time it was then, O,
That our guidwife had puddins to mak',
And she boiled them in the fan, O'—
and then rang out the chorus, even the old mother Paterson joining in with a feeble treble—
'O the barrin' o' our door, weel, weel, weel,
And the barrin' o' our door, weel!'
'Your health and song, Ronald!' she cried, when he had finished—or rather when they all had finished. 'Man, if there was just a laddie here wi' a fiddle or a penny whistle I'd get up and dance a Highland Schottische wi' ye—auld as I am!'