At last, when the late harvest of those days was nearly over, when Balcairnie was ‘grieving,’ or ‘leading,’ or ‘forking’ in the fields and in the stack-yards both of Balcairnie and Drumsheugh, before the first hoar frost had melted in the early rays of the morning sun, till it was lying again thick and white all around, like the manna of the children of Israel, in the moon-light; when the mellow russet and yellow apples had long replaced the delicate pink-and-white apple blossom, and there were no lingering flowers in the gardens save sun-flowers, marigolds, and daisies, Drumsheugh and his mother were to come home--not ‘late, late in the gloamin,’ like Kilmeny, but at a more rational hour of the afternoon. It would permit a four o’clock tea, or ‘fower hours,’ something perfectly distinct from a modern kettledrum. At the ‘fower hours’ Peggy’s famous pie was to serve as the _pièce de résistance_, well balanced by ale and glenlivat. Her maiden efforts in preserves, elderflower and elderberry, currant, and ginger wines were to keep company with the butter-bannocks and cakes and honey, the loaf-bread, the short-bread and the diet-loaf which suited the old lady’s green tea. The provision was not too ample for the large execution sanguinely expected from the ravenous appetites of the travellers. Balcairnie, too, had donned his best coat in honour of the occasion, hurrying from the harvest-field at the first word of warning that a yellow post-chaise was seen on the road to Drumsheugh. It had not been altogether the laird’s careless procrastination, or any reluctance to return home from a growing fear of what he was to find there, which had delayed the mother and son so long. There had been chases by privateers, contrary winds, an illness of Mrs. Ramsay’s, an accident to the London coach, uncontrollable impediments turning up in succession and baffling the travellers. But at last Peggy wore, under happy auspices, one of the new gowns which had been ordered from Baldie Fuggie. It had been carefully cut out, made up, and toned down under Primrose’s superintendence; next it had been brightened up by dexterous touches here and there, of lawn neckerchief and apron, and bonnie breast-knot. It was a very fair and gentle-looking young lady, whose trim feet in their rosetted shoes, under the dainty skirt well tucked through the pocket-hole, tripped so lightly--though the speed was tremulous, from her post by the decapitated stone pillars at the head of the fir avenue, into the middle of the rough road--along which she had jogged with Balcairnie on the wintry night of her dismal home-coming--to take that first place at the chaise door to which she was entitled. Old Mrs. Ramsay’s head, well protected with wraps, though it still wanted a month to Martinmas, was poked out of the window on her side in anticipation of her arrival. ‘Eh! can that be you, Peggy, my love?’ she cried with glad surprise. ‘You’re looking so well I would hardly have known you.’