By now, the Dissidents were living in the manse. It had its drawbacks: there was no view, the rooms were dark, it was dirty and malodorous, its few ornaments were in the worst of taste. But it had a sound roof and the kitchen was warm. Except for a bannock and the occasional egg, they did not have to depend on Mistress Baxter’s providing; the working fairies had come with them and the supply of grouse was kept up. The kitchen was warm because a continual peat fire smouldered on the hearth, to be puffed into a blaze when needed. It was not often needed. The working fairies were censorious about the parsimony prevailing in the manse kitchen: the mouldy turnips that went into the pot along with the sound ones, the salt herring boiled with a dish of kale to give it a whet, and withdrawn to help out another meal. A smell of singed wool drew them one and all to the kitchen, where it was an ever-fresh delight and marvel to see that frail woman, great with child, split a sheep’s head with one blow of a hatchet. Before the two halves were bound together with a tape, as the jaws of a dead man are bound, the tongue and the brains were taken out to be a regale for Mr. Baxter and the boy—the eyes being left in to add richness to the broth which would feed herself and her daughter. She was a woman whose work was never done. Cooking, scouring, laundering, sweeping, fetching peats, carrying water, putting patch on patch, she ran from one labour to another, tripping over her skirts. When Gibbie’s notions of cleanliness drove him to sweep a floor or rub the stair rail, she was too tired to notice the difference. He felt an appalled admiration for the woman, and when the other working fairies moved to better quarters in a cow byre he stayed on.