Dainty and daunty, sweet and strong, she stood, "the bonny like
o' her bonny mither," as said the South Country nurse, Nannie, who had
always lived at the Glen Cuagh House from the time that that mother was
a baby; "but no' sae fine like," the nurse would add with a sigh. For
she remembered ever the gentle airs and the high-bred, stately grace of
Mary Robertson,--for though married to Captain Cameron of Erracht,
Mary Robertson she continued to be to the Glen folk,--the lady of her
ancestral manor, now for five years lain under the birch trees yonder by
the church tower that looked out from its clustering firs and birches
on the slope beyond the loch. Five years ago the gentle lady had passed
from them, but like the liquid, golden sunlight, and like the perfume of
the heather and the firs, the aroma of her saintly life still filled the
Glen.
A year after that grief had fallen, Moira, her one daughter, "the bonny
like o' her bonny mither, though no' sae fine," had somehow slipped
into command of the House Farm, the only remaining portion of the wide
demesne of farmlands once tributary to the House. And by the thrift
which she learned from her South Country nurse in the care of her
poultry and her pigs, and by her shrewd oversight of the thriftless,
doddling Highland farmer and his more thriftless and more doddling
womenfolk, she brought the farm to order and to a basis of profitable
returns.
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