Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 4).djvu/165

 "I muish to know the way. to Fairy-knowe.

"Mammie, mammie," exclaimed the little rustic, running towards the door of the hut, "come out and speak to this gentleman."

Her mother appeared,—a handsome young country-woman, to whose features, originally sly and espiegle in expression, matrimony had given that decent matronly air which peculiarly marks the peasant's wife of Scotland. She had an infant in me arm, and with the other she smoothed down her apron, to which hung a chubby child of two years old. The elder girl, whom the traveller had first seen, fell back behind her mother as soon as she appeared, and kept that station, occasionally peeping out to look at the stranger.

"What was your pleasure, sir?", said the woman, with an air of respectful breading, not quite common in her rank of life, but without any thing resembling forwardness.