The Lilac Sunbonnet | Page 9

half before the sun looked over the crest of Ben Gairn. They were
humming busily still. In all the chambers of the house there was the
same reposeful stillness. Through them Winsome Charteris moved with
free, light step. She glanced in to see that her grandfather and
grandmother were wanting for nothing in their cool and wide
sitting-room, where the brown mahogany-cased eight- day clock kept
up an unequal ticking, like a man walking upon two wooden legs of
which one is shorter than the other.
It said something for Winsome Charteris and her high-hearted courage,
that what she was accustomed to see in that sitting-room had no effect
upon her spirits. It was a pleasant room enough, with two windows
looking to the south--little round-budded, pale- petalled monthly roses
nodding and peeping within the opened window-frames. Sweet it was
with a great peace, every chair covered with old sprigged chintz,
flowers of the wood and heather from the hill set in china vases about it.
The room where the old folk dwelt at Craig Ronald was fresh within as
is the dew on sweetbrier. Fresh, too, was the apparel of her
grandmother, the flush of youth yet on her delicate cheek, though the
Psalmist's limit had long been passed for her.
As Winsome looked within,
"Are ye not sleeping, grandmother?" she said.
The old lady looked up with a resentful air.
"Sleepin'! The lassie's gane gyte! [out of her senses]. What for wad I be
sleepin' in the afternune? An' me wi' the care o' yer gran'faither--sic a
handling, him nae better nor a bairn, an' you a bit feckless hempie wi'

yer hair fleeing like the tail o' a twa- year-auld cowt! [colt]. Sleepin'
indeed! Na, sleepin's nane for me!"
The young girl came up and put her arms about her grandmother.
"That's rale unceevil o' ye, noo, Granny Whitemutch!" she said,
speaking in the coaxing tones to which the Scots' language lends itself
so easily, "an' it's just because I hae been sae lang at the
blanket-washin', seein' till that hizzy Meg. An' ken ye what I saw!-ane
o' the black dragoons in full retreat, grannie; but he left his camp
equipage ahint him, as the sergeant said when--Ye ken the story,
grannie. Ye maun hae been terrible bonny in thae days!"
"'Deed I'm nane sae unbonny yet, for a' yer helicat flichtmafleathers,
sprigget goons, an' laylac bonnets," said the old lady, shaking her head
till the white silk top-knots trembled. "No, nor I'm nane sae auld
nayther. The gudeman in the corner there, he's auld and dune gin'ye like,
but no me--no me! Gin he warna spared to me, I could even get a man
yet," continued the lively old lady, "an' whaur wad ye be then, my lass,
I wad like to ken?"
"Perhaps I could get one too, grannie," she said. And she shook her
head with an air of triumph. Winsome kissed her grandmother gently
on the brow.
"Nane o' yer Englishy tricks an' trokin's," said she, settling the white
muslin band which she wore across her brow wrinkleless and straight,
where it had been disarrayed by the onslaught of her impulsive
granddaughter.
"Aye," she went on, stretching out a hand which would have done
credit to a great dame, so white and slender was it in spite of the
hollows which ran into a triangle at the wrist, and the pale- blue veins
which the slight wrinkles have thrown into relief.
"An' I mind the time when three o' his Majesty's officers--nane o' yer
militia wi' horses that rin awa' wi' them ilka time they gang oot till
exerceese, but rale sodgers wi' sabre-tashies to their heels and spurs like

pitawtie dreels. Aye, sirs, but that was before I married an elder in the
Kirk o' the Marrow. I wasna twenty-three when I had dune wi' the
gawds an' vanities o' this wicked world."
"I saw a minister lad the day--a stranger," said Winsome, very quietly.
"Sirce me," returned her grandmother briskly; "kenned I e'er the like o'
ye, Winifred Chayrteris, for licht-heedit-ness an' lack o' a' common
sense! Saw a minister an' ne'er thocht, belike, o' sayin' cheep ony mair
nor if he had been a wutterick [weasel]. An' what like was he, na? Was
he young, or auld--or no sae verra auld, like mysel'? Did he look like an
Establisher by the consequence o' the body, or--"
"But, grannie dear, how is it possible that I should ken, when all that I
saw of him was but his coat-tails? It was him that was running away."
"My certes," said grannie, "but the times are changed since my day!
When I was as young as ye are the day it wasna sodger or minister
ayther that wad hae run frae the sicht o'