And in he came and sat by the fire and gave the cat Jock a bit of a stroke, and sat and drank the tea that she poured him, not offering to help her as Quaritch would have done, God be here it was a woman’s work, wasn’t it now, who’d ever heard of a man who sossed with the cups? And Ake drank the tea through his curling moustache, and wiped that, and nodded Ay, that’s a good brew. I think I’ll taik down every morning for one. Chris said There’s no need to do that, Mr Ogilvie, I take up cups to the folk that want them. And Ake said Oh to hell with that, he wasn’t a cripple and could come for his own. Besides, he was used to getting up with the light and hadn’t a fancy for stinking in bed. Chris thought And suppose I’ve no fancy for you sitting about in my way in the kitchen? But she didn’t say it, just went on with her work, watched by Ake sitting smoking his pipe—Ay, God, she looked a bonny lass still, a bit over-small for her height, you would say, but a fine leg and hip, a warm bit quean. She’d fair set a-lowe and burned up Colquohoun in her time, you wouldn’t but wonder; and maybe had never yet had a man to handle her as she needed handling.

So he got in the way of coming to the kitchen and sitting drinking his tea every morning, Ma Cleghorn heard and said to Chris that she’d better look out, for they weren’t to be trusted, childes with curling mousers like yon. And then sighed: Though, God, there’s no need to warn you, I keep forgetting you’re gentry yourself, a minister’s widow, not for common folk. Chris asked what Ma wanted her to do with him—or thought he was likely to do with her? And Ma said that if Chris couldn’t guess about that there were other folk than the Virgin Mary had had their immaculate conceptions, faith.

Chris laughed and paid her but little heed, Ake as far (she knew) from such thoughts as herself, funny in a way to have him about, it wiped out the years, all the gentry in her, she was back in a farm kitchen again and the man sitting douce and drinking his tea and she getting ready the meat for him…. And Ake would give his bit mouser a curl and tell the latest tale of the Provost.

Chris asked how he’d gotten the job and Ake said by the skin of the teeth and the will of the Lord, he’d been at school with the laddie Speight a thirty-five years or so back, they were both of them of Laurencekirk stock. Well, he’d been a gey dreich and ill-favoured loon, and Ake had ta’en him a punch now and then to kittle him up and mind him his manners. The result was he’d fair ta’en a liking to Ake and would follow him about like a cat a fish-cadger, right through their schooldays and a wee whilie after, when they’d gotten long trousers and cuddled their bit queans. Syne they’d tint one another, Ake had gone drifting south as a joiner, to the feuching stink of the Glasgow yards, to that windy sods’ burrow, the capital, Edinburgh, syne drifted up to the Howe again, he’d never felt much at home, as you’d say, outside the cloud-reek and claik of the Howe. And that was how he had come to Segget, not near so dead in those times as now, the joiner’s business with still enough fettle to brink a man a bit meal and drink.