As the next best thing, the Lady repeatedly and earnestly recommended Peggy to the good officies of Cunnings,[5] Mrs. Ramsay’s old maid and housekeeper, an excellent servant, devoted to the family, honest enough to be trusted with untold gold, and having but one failing to be watched and weighed against so many virtues. True-hearted, kind Cunnings, powerful in her worth, invulnerable on every other point, was ‘too fond of a drappie’--to put her weakness in the euphemistic words in which it was for the most part respectfully and tenderly veiled. She could not look on the wine when it was red, or more correctly, on whisky when it was clear and colourless as the water at a well-eye, or just tinged with the suspicion of amber which belongs to a mountain stream flowing over a bed of peat, without danger of forgetting her obligations and falling lamentably from her honourable reputation. But except on rare and unhappy occasions, Mrs. Ramsay’s strong hand had always been able to keep Cunnings from stumbling into the snare. And the Lady argued that Peggy could take care of the keys of the cellar and side-board if she could do nothing else, and that having been solemnly warned of Cunnings’ weakness, she would not be so silly and unprincipled as to expose her servant to temptation. Poor fallible Cunnings, on her part, was incapable, in spite of the flaw in her perfect integrity, of laying snares to induce Peggy to leave the keys about, or abandon them altogether. Mrs. Ramsay then provided Peggy with a maid of her own; a sort of humble companion, to lighten the tedium when she should be left alone, and to prevent her seeking undesirable associates elsewhere. The person selected was a distant cousin of Peggy’s, five or six years older, who had been in good service, and knew and could teach young Mrs. Ramsay many things of which she was profoundly ignorant. In this way Jenny Hedderwick would break the fallow ground of Peggy’s mind and pave the way for the Lady’s more thorough and farther-reaching cultivation of the soil.