The Daft Days. Munro Neil

with a basket. She put it down at her feet, and bobbed a curtsey, a thing that nowadays you rarely see in Scotland.

      “Tuts! woman,” he said to her, lifting the basket and putting it in her hand. “Why need you bother with the like of that? You and your curtseys! They’re out of date, Miss Baxter, out of date, like the decent men that deserved them long ago before my time.”

      “No, they’re not out of date, Mr Dyce,” said she; “I’ll aye be minding you about my mother; you’ll be paid back some day.”

      “Tuts!” said he again, impatient. “You’re an awful blether: how’s your patient, Duncan Gill?”

      “As dour as the devil, sir,” said the nurse. “Still hanging on.”

      “Poor man! poor man!” said Mr Dyce. “He’ll just have to put his trust in God.”

      “Oh, he’s no’ so far through as all that,” said Betty Baxter. “He can still sit up and take his drop of porridge. They’re telling me you have got a wonderful niece, Mr Dyce, all the way from America. What a mercy for her! But I have not set eyes on her yet. I’m so busy that I could not stand in the close like the others, watching: what is she like?”