"Preserve 's a'! Annie Anderson, what brings ye here this time o' nicht?" exclaimed her aunt.
"It's a lang time sin I saw ye, auntie, and I wantit to see ye."
"Weel, come butt the hoose. Ye're growin' a great muckle quean," said her aunt, inclined to a favourable consideration of her by her growth.
Margaret "didna like bairns--menseless craturs--aye wantin' ither fowk to do for them!" But growth was a kind of regenerating process in her eyes, and when a girl began to look like a woman, she regarded it as an outward sign of conversion, or something equally valuable.--So she conducted her into the presence of her uncle, a little old man, worn and bent, with gray locks peeping out from under a Highland bonnet.
"This is my brither Jeames's bairn," she said.
The old man received her kindly, called her his dawtie, and made her sit down by him on a three-legged _creepie_, talking to her as if she had been quite a child, while she, capable of high converse as she was, replied in corresponding terms. Her great-aunt was confined to her bed with rheumatism. Supper was preparing, and Annie was not sorry to have a share, for indeed, during the summer, her meals were often scanty enough. While they ate, the old man kept helping her to the best, talking to her all the time.
"Will ye no come and bide wi' me, dawtie?" he said, meaning little by the question.
"Na, na," answered Margaret for her. "She's at the schule, ye ken, uncle, and we maunna interfere wi' her schoolin.'--Hoo does that leein' ted, Robert Bruce, carry himsel' to ye, bairn?"
"Ow! I jist never min' him," answered Annie.
"Weel, it's a' he deserves at your han'. But gin I war you, I wad let him ken that gin he saws your corn ye hae a richt to raither mair nor his gleanins."
"I dinna ken what ye mean," answered Annie.
"Ow! na; I daursay no. But ye may jist as weel ken noo, that that ted, Robert Bruce, has twa hunner poun' odd o' yer ain, lassie; and gin he doesna use ye weel, ye can jist tell him 'at I telt ye sae."
This piece of news had not the overpowering effect upon Annie which, perhaps, her aunt had expected. No doubt the money seemed in her eyes a limitless fortune; but then Bruce had it. She might as soon think of robbing a bear of her whelps as getting her own from Bruce. Besides, what could she do with it if she had it? And she had not yet acquired the faculty of loving money for its own sake. When she rose to take her leave, she felt little richer than when she entered, save for the kind words of John Peterson.