The big girl was a little impatient. “I’ve told you everything I remember.”

“Tell it again.”

“I should think you’d get tired of hearing the same thing.”

“Oh, I never do.”

“Well . . . Father were what they call an aristocrat. He lived in Aberdeen, Scotland, and his folks, the Mackenzies, had a town house and two country houses. He belonged to the landed gentry.”

“What’s landed gentry?”

“It means he were a gentleman and didn’t have to work.”

“Will James and Dennie be gentlemen?”

“Of course not. We lost all our money.”

“Tell how we lost it.” Abbie settled herself with complacence. There was an element of satisfaction in having had such a foreign substance at one time, even if it was long before her birth.

“Well . . . Father were a young man and never had to do nothing but enjoy hisself, and he were out one day following the hare and hounds . . .”

“Tell about that.”

“That’s hunting . . . a pack of hounds after a rabbit . . . and he got away from the rest of them and were lost.”

“The rabbit?”

“No, dunce-cap, . . . you know I mean father. And he come to a peasant’s cottage.”

“What’s peasant?”

“Awful poor people that have to work. But don’t stop me every minute. I always forget where I were. Well . . . and he wanted a drink. And a sixteen-year-old peasant girl come out of the house. They were Irish, but I guess they were working for some folks in Scotland. Anyway it were Mother and she got a drink for him . . . were pulling up the rope and he took the rope and pulled it up hisself. Just think! A gentleman . . . and Mother were sixteen . . . just one year older than me. Abbie, do you suppose there’ll be an aristocratic landed gentleman out in Blackhawk County where we’re going?”

“No . . . I don’t think so. Go on.”

“Well, Mother were pretty . . . Irish girls about always are . . . and there were a rosebush and Father asked her for a rose and she pulled one for him. Abbie, don’t you tell anybody, but I’ve got a little rosebush done up in a wet rag in the wagon and I’m going to plant it out in Blackhawk County.”

“Ho! Ho! It takes years and years for a rosebush to grow big enough to have flowers to pull off for a-ris . . . for a-rist . . . for gentlemen. Go on.”

“Anyway, Father took his rose and went away and the next day he come back.”

“Were he lost again?”

“No, dunce-cap! He come back to see Mother a-purpose. And he come other days, even after that, and they would walk over the heather hills together.”

“What’s feather hills?”

“Not feather! Heather! . . . a little kind of weedy grass. And all the neighbors shook their heads and said they’d seen that thing happen before from the gentry . . . and . . .” Isabelle whispered solemnly, “no good ever come of it.”