Jean’s father had a reprehensible habit of bringing her, wrapped in a blanket, out into the garden at ten o’clock at night, when she would be handed about from knee to knee like a superior sort of refreshment. To be fetched out of bed in this fashion would have been upsetting to some children, but Jean, with an adorable sleepy smile, would make herself agreeable for half an hour or so, and when carried back and tucked into bed--always by her father--fell asleep again directly, and never seemed a scrap the worse. On such occasions she was always expected to sing. She never sang anything but Scottish songs--mournful or martial, mostly Jacobite, and her repertory was enormous. While other children were learning “Little Jack Horner,” or “Hey diddle diddle!” Jean, thanks to Elspeth, learned “Hey Johnny Cope,” or “Cam’ ye by Athol,” and her voice was as the voice of Katherine of France, “broken music,” for her voice was music, and her English broken. Sometimes a belated passer-by would wait outside to listen in wonder to someone singing in the clearest baby voice:
Sing Hey, my bra’ John Hielandman, Sing Ho, my bra’ John Hielandman,
and at the end of each refrain she always kissed her father, for there was no one in the world to match with him in Jean’s eyes. She absolutely declined to sing the last verse after that day upon which she discovered what “hanging” meant, Colin and Andrew having suspended Tammy from the apple tree. At times, Jean could raise her voice otherwise than in song, and on that occasion the whole Terrace resounded with her shrieks.
Next door there dwelt a very grumpy gentleman. With that easy confidence in a neighbor’s neighborliness generally manifested by people who have lived much abroad, Jean’s father, on taking up his quarters, had written asking permission to put some wire-netting on the top of the party wall to prevent cricket balls going over. To his immense surprise he received a curt and discourteous refusal, which terminated in a warning to the effect that, if balls did come over, there they would have to stay, as the writer would in no circumstances have boys running in and out of his house, and there was no back entrance. Of course balls went over; but Colin and Andrew found an unexpected ally in Mr. Knagg’s housekeeper, who threw the balls back again without consulting him; and Mr. Knagg felt rather aggrieved that, as yet, he had found no cause for complaint. Complaint in some form or other was as the breath of life to him; he had gone to law with so many of his fellow-townsmen that his society was no longer sought after, and his exceedingly clean steps were untrodden by strangers. He intended at first to complain that the banjo-playing in the garden disturbed him at his studies, when he happened to hear Jean sing “This iss no my plaid,” and somehow he gave up the idea.