Maggie was often invited to spend a day at Bogsheuch--
oftener indeed than she felt at liberty to leave her father and their
common work, though not oftener than she would have liked to go.
One morning, early in summer, when first the hillsides had begun to look
attractive, a small agricultural cart, such as is now but seldom seen, with
little paint except on its two red wheels, and drawn by a thin, long-haired
little horse, stopped at the door of the soutar's house, clay-floored and
straw-thatched, in a back-lane of the village. It was a cart the cottar
used in the cultivation of his little holding, and his son who drove it,
now nearly middle-aged, was likely to succeed to the hut and acres of
Bogsheuch. Man and equipage, both well known to the soutar, had come with
an invitation, more pressing than usual, that Maggie would pay them a
visit of a few days.
Father and daughter, consulting together in the presence of Andrew Cormack,
arrived at the conclusion that, work being rather slacker than usual, and
nobody in need of any promised job which the soutar could not finish by
himself in good time, Maggie was quite at liberty to go.
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