Scotch Marriages, Volume 1 by Sarah Tytler

At last, when the late harvest of those days was nearly over, when / Balcairnie was ‘grieving,' or ‘leading,' or ‘forking' in the fields and / in the stack-yards both of Balcairnie and Drumsheugh, before the first / hoar frost had melted in the early rays of the morning sun, till it was / lying again thick and white all around, like the manna of the children / of Israel, in the moon-light; when the mellow russet and yellow apples / had long replaced the delicate pink-and-white apple blossom, and there / were no lingering flowers in the gardens save sun-flowers, marigolds, / and daisies, Drumsheugh and his mother were to come home -- not ‘late, / late in the gloamin,' like Kilmeny, but at a more rational hour of / the afternoon. It would permit a four o'clock tea, or ‘fower hours,' / something perfectly distinct from a modern kettledrum. At the ‘fower / hours' Peggy's famous pie was to serve as the _pièce de résistance_, / well balanced by ale and glenlivat. Her maiden efforts in preserves, / elderflower and elderberry, currant, and ginger wines were to keep / company with the butter-bannocks and cakes and honey, the loaf-bread, / the short-bread and the diet-loaf which suited the old lady's green / tea. The provision was not too ample for the large execution sanguinely / expected from the ravenous appetites of the travellers. Balcairnie, / too, had donned his best coat in honour of the occasion, hurrying / from the harvest-field at the first word of warning that a yellow / post-chaise was seen on the road to Drumsheugh.

It had not been altogether the laird's careless procrastination, or any / reluctance to return home from a growing fear of what he was to find / there, which had delayed the mother and son so long. There had been / chases by privateers, contrary winds, an illness of Mrs. Ramsay's, an / accident to the London coach, uncontrollable impediments turning up in / succession and baffling the travellers.

But at last Peggy wore, under happy auspices, one of the new gowns / which had been ordered from Baldie Fuggie. It had been carefully cut / out, made up, and toned down under Primrose's superintendence; next it / had been brightened up by dexterous touches here and there, of lawn / neckerchief and apron, and bonnie breast-knot. It was a very fair and / gentle-looking young lady, whose trim feet in their rosetted shoes, / under the dainty skirt well tucked through the pocket-hole, tripped / so lightly -- though the speed was tremulous, from her post by the / decapitated stone pillars at the head of the fir avenue, into the / middle of the rough road -- along which she had jogged with Balcairnie on / the wintry night of her dismal home-coming -- to take that first place at / the chaise door to which she was entitled.

Old Mrs. Ramsay's head, well protected with wraps, though it still / wanted a month to Martinmas, was poked out of the window on her side in / anticipation of her arrival. ‘Eh! can that be you, Peggy, my love? ' she / cried with glad surprise. ‘You're looking so well I would hardly have / known you.'

But when Drumsheugh leapt from the chaise and took his wife in his / arms, he said the very reverse, though he had not even heard his / mother's comment, and had no thought of contradicting her. ‘I'm glad to / find my Peggy the same,' he said fervently, ‘the very same as when I / left her. I'm far gladder of that than to be at hame again, though that / is good, too. I have not seen any leddy like you, Peggy, my doo, since / I quitted Drumsheugh.'

Peggy looked uplifted to the sky as at the very words she would have / liked best to hear.

‘The ungrateful man! ' said Primrose Ramsay to Balcairnie, when the two / were comparing notes together in the recess of one of the drawing-room / windows before he left. ‘The ungrateful woman! ' after all I have done / to make her liker him and her place henceforth.'

He was not sure whether she was most in jest or earnest, and there / was a strain of wistfulness in his reply. ‘But did you not see how / his speech pleased her, Miss Ramsay? She would rather have been told / she was the same to him than that she had grown like the queen on / the throne; yet she would not have been the same to him if she had / not changed with the weeks and months, thanks to you. Do you hear / me, madam, or do you suppose I'm contradicting myself? He has been / learning, almost without his knowledge, to see her with other een all / the time he has been away, and if she had come upon him, just as she / used to be, he would have been startled and flegged. It is these other / een which the improvement in her fits so well, that he was as proud and / happy as a king to see at a glance she was as bonnie and dear to him as / ever. Except for you, Miss Ramsay, this gude end would never have come / to pass.'

‘I'm afraid you're a flatterer, Balcairnie,' said Primrose demurely.

‘Na, na,' he said hastily, with some trouble and agitation laying hold / of him, in consequence of her accusation, ‘I have no saft words. I'm / but a yeoman-farmer. Nobody's likely to ettle to rub me down -- or up,' / he finished, a little sorely.

‘Don't let them, if there is anybody so conceited and impertinent as / to try,' she said quickly, with a curious tone of half-smothered / indignation against him rather than against herself, mingling with her / half fun; ‘there is no call for it. You are best as you are; you could / not be better. But why do you let me speak like that? Why do you need / to be told such a plain truth?'

A rush of colour flew into his face, a glow into his eyes; still he / paused doubtfully, as at news too good to be believed. ‘Forgive me for / being a gowk,' he said humbly, ‘but do you really mean I could not be / better to you, Miss Ramsay?'

She bit her lips, frowned, laughed, and nodded, while she grew as red / as fire herself. ‘Why do you make me say and do such things? ' she / repeated, with an impatient tap of her foot.