And Meg Kissock was her true admirer and faithful slave--Winsome's heavy hand, too, upon occasion; for all the men on the farm stood in awe of Meg's prowess, and very especially of Meg's tongue. So also the work fell mostly upon these two, and in less measure upon a sister of Meg's, Jess Kissock, lately returned from England, a young lady whom we have already met.
During the night and morning Winsome had studied with some attention the Hebrew Bible, in which the name Allan Welsh appeared, as well as the Latin Luther Commentary, and the Hebrew Lexicon, on the first page of which the name of Ralph Peden was written in the same neat print hand as in the note-book.
This was the second day of the blanket-washing, and Winsome, having in her mind a presentiment that the proprietor of these learned quartos would appear to claim his own, carried them down to the bridge, where Meg and her sister were already deep in the mysteries of frothing tubs and boiling pots. Winsome from the broomy ridge could hear the shrill "giff-gaff" [give and take] of their colloquy. She sat down under Ralph's very broom bush, and absently turned over the leaves of the note-book, catching sentences here and there.
"I wonder how old he is?" she said, meditatively; "his coat-tails looked old, but the legs went too lively for an old man; besides, he likes maids to be dressed in lilac--" She paused still more thoughtfully. "Well, we shall see." She bent over and pulled the milky-stalked, white-seeded head of a dandelion. Taking it between the finger and thumb of her left hand she looked critically at it as though it were a glass of wine. "He is tall, and he is fair, and his age is--"
Here she pouted her pretty lips and blew.
"One--ha, ha!--he was an active infant when he ran from the blanket-tramping--two, three, four--"
Some tiny feather-headed spikelets disengaged themselves unwillingly from the round and venerable downpolled dandelion. They floated lazily up between the tassels of the broom upon the light breeze.
"Five, six, seven, eight--faith, he was a clean-heeled laddie yon. Ye couldna see his legs or coat-tails for stour as he gaed roon' the Far Away Turn."
Winsome was revelling in her broad Scots. She had learned it from her grandmother.
"Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen--I'll no can set the dogs on him then--sixteen, seventeen, eighteen--dear me, this is becoming interesting."
The plumules were blowing off freely now, like snow from the eaves on a windy day in winter.
"Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one--I must reverence my elders. If I don't blow stronger he'll turn out to be fifty--twenty-three, twenty-f--"