"You minded that! But I'm thinking it wasna a lassie in a pinafore you saw in the long parks of Kinnordy, it was just a gey done auld woman."
"It was a lassie in a pinafore, mother, when she was far away, but when she came near it was a gey done auld woman."
"And a fell ugly one!"
"The most beautiful one I shall ever see."
"I wonder to hear you say it. Look at my wrinkled auld face."
"It is the sweetest face in all the world."
"See how the rings drop off my poor wasted finger."
"There will always be some one nigh, mother, to put them on again."
"Ay, will there! Well I know it. Do you mind how when you were but a bairn you used to say, "Wait till I'm a man, and you'll never have a reason for greeting again?"
I remembered.
"You used to come running into the house to say, 'There's a proud dame going down the Mary-wellbrae in a cloak that is black on one side and white on the other; wait till I'm a man, and you'll have one the very same.' And when I lay on gey hard beds you said, 'When I'm a man you'll lie on feathers.' You saw nothing bonny, you never heard of my setting my heart on anything, but what you flung up your head and cried,
