"When I was here in June"--and the General stretched himself in a deep red leather chair--"I stood a while one evening watching a fair-haired, blue-eyed little maid who was making a daisy chain and singing to herself in a garden. Her mother came out from the cottage, and, since she did not see me, devoured the child with eyes of love. Then something came into her mind--perhaps that the good man would soon be home for supper; she rushed forward and seized the child, as if it had been caught in some act of mischief. 'Come into the hoose, this meenut, ye little beesom, an' say yir carritches. What's the chief end o' man?'" "Could she have been so accomplished at that age?" Kate inquired, with interest. "Are you sure about the term of endearment? Was the child visibly flattered?" "She caught my eye as they passed in, and flung me a smile like one excusing her mother's fondness. But Davidson hears better things, for as soon as he appears the younger members of a family are taken from their porridge and set to their devotions. "'What are ye glowerin' at there, ye little cutty? Toom (empty) yir mooth this meenut and say the twenty-third Psalm to the minister.'" "Life seems full of incident, and the women make the play. What about the men? Are they merely a chorus?" "A stranger spending a week in one of our farm-houses would be ready to give evidence in a court of justice that he had never seen women so domineering or men so submissive as in Drumtochty. "And why? Because the housewife who sits in church as if butter would n't melt in her mouth speaks with much fluency and vigour at home, and the man says nothing. His normal state is doing wrong and being scolded from morning till night--for going out without his breakfast, for not cleaning his boots when he comes in, for spoiling chairs by sitting on them with wet clothes, for spilling his tea on the tablecloth, for going away to market with a dusty coat, for visiting the stable with his Sunday coat, for not speaking at all to visitors, for saying things he ought n't when he does speak--till the long-suffering man, raked fore and aft, rushes from the house in desperation, and outside remarks to himself, by way of consolation, 'Losh keep 's! there 's nae livin' wi' her the day; her tongue 's little better than a threshing-mill.' His confusion, however, is neither deep nor lasting, and in a few minutes he has started for a round of the farm in good heart, once or twice saying 'Sall' in a way that shows a lively recollection of his wife's gifts." "Then the men love to be ruled," began Kate, with some contempt; "it does not give me a higher idea of the district." "Wait a moment, young woman, for all that goes for nothing except to show that the men allow the women to be supreme in one sphere." "In the dairy, I suppose?"