SCOTCH MARRIAGES I. SCOTCH MARRIAGES BY SARAH TYTLER AUTHOR OF ‘SCOTCH FIRS’ ‘CITOYENNE JACQUELINE’ &c. IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1882 [_All rights reserved_] ‘Choose not alone a proper mate But proper time to marry’ COWPER CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. _LADY PEGGY._ CHAPTER PAGE I. BRIDEGROOM AND BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND 3 II. PEGGY’S WEDDING 22 III. PEGGY’S WELCOME HOME 48 IV. THE LONG DAYS THAT FOLLOWED 71 V. THE REIGN OF MISRULE 92 VI. ‘LADY PEGGY’ 111 VII. ‘HUNTINGTOWER’ 133 VIII. PEGGY’S FRIENDS 158 IX. THE LESSONS THAT PRIMROSE GAVE WHILE BALCAIRNIE LOOKED ON 182 X. ‘A’ WILL BE RICHT AGAIN GIN JAMIE WERE COME BACK 209 _JEAN KINLOCH_ I. JEAN SCORNED 223 II. BOB MEFFIN’S AMENDS 247 III. JEAN’S REPRISALS 275 LADY PEGGY CHAPTER I. BRIDEGROOM AND BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND. During the last century there was little real difference between young Drumsheugh and young Balcairnie, the young laird and the young yeoman,[1] who was also the laird’s chief tenant and chosen friend. Jamie Ramsay, of Drumsheugh, and Jock Home, of Balcairnie, both rejoicing in a territorial appellation, had sat together on the same bench in the same parish school. For that matter Jock, though not particularly scholarly, as the cleverer of the two, had generally sat above his companion. The boys had played together in the same games of ball and hockey. In company they had scoured the fields together after birds’ nests, nuts, and haws. They had in their green youth worn and torn the same corduroys little different in quality, and satisfied their hearty appetites on the same wholesome porridge and kail, oatmeal cakes, and ‘bannocks o’ barley,’ for the laird’s table was not much more daintily supplied than the farmer’s.