'I suppose, mother, it was because you
were most at home in your own town, and there was never much
pleasure to me in writing of people who could not have known you,
nor of squares and wynds you never passed through, nor of a
country-side where you never carried your father's dinner in a
flagon. There is scarce a house in all my books where I have not
seemed to see you a thousand times, bending over the fireplace or
winding up the clock.'
'And yet you used to be in such a quandary because you knew nobody
you could make your women-folk out of! Do you mind that, and how
we both laughed at the notion of your having to make them out of
me?'
'I remember.'
'And now you've gone back to my father's time. It's more than
sixty years since I carried his dinner in a flagon through the long
parks of Kinnordy.'
'I often go into the long parks, mother, and sit on the stile at
the edge of the wood till I fancy I see a little girl coming toward
me with a flagon in her hand.'
'Jumping the burn (I was once so proud of my jumps!) and swinging
the flagon round so quick that what was inside hadna time to fall
out. I used to wear a magenta frock and a white pinafore. Did I
ever tell you that?'
'Mother, the little girl in my story wears a magenta frock and a
white pinafore.'
'You minded that! But I'm thinking it wasna a lassie in a pinafore
you saw in the long parks of Kinnordy, it was just a gey done auld
woman.
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