‘There is Balcairnie,’ said Mrs. Forsyth one day, when the two women were earnestly speculating on the places they ought to visit in their search. ‘We have not been to Balcairnie yet. I am told that Balcairnie, in addition to his peacock and a most splendid bubbly-jock, has got a pair of guinea-fowls. We have not a single guinea-fowl’s feather, and we ought to have a whole row of them. What a good thing for us, Primrose, that Balcairnie has set up a pair of guinea-fowls. We must go a-begging to Balcairnie.’ ‘He is my cousin’s great friend,’ said Primrose meditatively. ‘I remember him as a long-legged laddie running about with Jamie; but I had not much to do with him.’ ‘Of course not,’ said Mrs. Forsyth emphatically, ‘your aunt would take care of that. Your poor cousin had too much to do with his tenant--not that Balcairnie was so far beneath Drumsheugh. Balcairnie is a good farm, and they say its tenant has grown rich in these war times, though he is well liked, and has not a lowe raised among his stacks for keeping up famine prices, like some other farmers. But it was he who took about Drumsheugh to maidens and country ploys, where he fell in with “Lady Peggy.” Had it not been for her there would have been no great harm done, since young men will have their heads out and know for themselves what a splore means. Why, even Davie, though he was coming out for a doctor, which is the next thing to being a minister so far as douceness is wanted, went his round of first-footings, and feet-washings, and dergies, before he had me to take care of him,’ the young wife ended, with a fine show of power and sedateness. ‘But as they tell,’ she began again, ‘Balcairnie had gone too far himself in daundering and sitting among the stooks, and dancing with the barn-door beauty, who was as cunning as Sawtan himself in her schemes. He might have given her his promise--who knows?--in their trysts and convoys and caperings, for a wily fool never loses sight of her own interest. At last, he pushed the laird into the breach, and escaped by causing the officer to cover the soldier, instead of the soldier the officer.’ ‘What a shame!’ cried Primrose; and then her natural candour and sagacity came to her aid in disentangling the perversion of the story. ‘If Jamie did not put Balcairnie out,’ she suggested; ‘that was more likely than that Drumsheugh should serve as a cat’s paw to another lad.’ ‘Any way, Balcairnie acted as blackfoot to the laird and played him an ill turn,’ maintained Mrs. Forsyth, who in the midst of her youth and happiness was not disposed to take a charitable view of human nature. Kirsty Forsyth showed herself a trifle hardened at that stage of her history. But so blinding is covetousness--granted the object coveted is no heavier than a feather--that Balcairnie’s evil deeds did not hinder Mrs. Forsyth from instigating her husband to invite the yeoman to dinner on the market-day.