“Angry?” said Jean; “ma hert failed last nicht for a whilie, but that 's ower noo an' for ever. John a' lu vit ye frae the time we sat in the schule thegither, an' a' wes a happy wumman when ye mairried me.
“A 've been lifted mony a time when a' saw how fouk respeckit ye, and abune a' when ye gaed doon the kirk with the cups in yir hands at the Saicrament, for a' kent ye were worthy.
“Ye 're dearer tae me ilka year that comes and gaes, but a' never lu vit ye as a' dae this nicht, an' a' coont sic a husband better than onything God cud gie me on earth.”
And then Jean did what was a strange thing in Drumtochty--she flung her arms round Burnbrae's neck and kissed him.
DRUMTOCHTY, hoeing the turnips for the second time on a glorious day in early August, saw the Kildrummie auctioneer go up the left side of the Glen and down the right like one charged with high affairs. It was understood that Jock Constable could ride anything in the shape of a horse, and that afternoon he had got ten miles an hour out of an animal which had been down times without number, and whose roaring could be heard from afar. Jock was in such haste that he only smacked his lips as he passed our public-house, and waved his hand when Hillocks shouted, “Hoo's a' wi' ye?” from a neighbouring field. But he dismounted whenever he saw a shapely gate-post, and spent five minutes at the outer precincts of the two churches.
“It 'ill be a roup,” and Hillocks nodded to his foreman with an air of certitude; “a' wun-ner wha 's it is; some Kildrummie man, maist likely.”
When the advertising disease first broke out in the country, a Muirtown grocer with local connections disfigured our main road with his list of prices, till in a moment of incredible audacity he affixed a cheap tea advertisement to the Parish Kirk door, and was understood to have escaped penal servitude by offering an abject apology to Doctor Davidson, and contributing ten pounds for the poor of the parish. Constable's announcements were the only mural literature afterwards allowed in the Glen, and Jock prided himself on their grandeur. They were headed in large type “Displenishing Sale,” and those imposing words, which had never been heard in the ordinary speech of the Glen within the memory of man, were supported in the body of the document by “heifers,” “fat oxen,” “draught horses,” “agricultural implements,” and “dairy apparatus.” Jock had “cereals” in one bill, but yielded to public feeling, and returned to “oats and barley” as a concession to the condition of a semieducated people.