‘“Rest a wee while, now”, urged Ann.
 “I will, dear, to please you. And then I’ll tell you what happened me long ago. Many a time I wonder how I come through it all.”
 nn looked straight before her, through the open door, into the bare little kitchen. A pint tin on the dresser caught the gleam of the fire-light. Her eyes were fixed on it. Her face was cold and set.
 “There’s things you never forget”, murmured Jinanna, “You you never forget-no matter how long you live-no matter what happens … I was nineteen-and, Jimmy Murdock, he was twenty-two, and we were walkin’. My father wanted me to marry a man of the name of McKinstrey, that lived at the foot of the hill. He had lashins and lavins of money, and his land marched ours, but sure he was an old man with a baird on him, and he scarred the heart out of me. I couldn’t have married him, not if I’d been hung for it! The worst of it was my father and Jimmy couldn’t agree. When he’d come in to see me, they’d have a crack together and they’d be sure to fall out. My father was set for aggravatin’ him, and he was red-headed, and aisy riz in the temper. They’d start, and argufy over a heifer, maybe, or a ploughin’-match, and Jimmy, the foolish boy, had a dread on him lettin’ the old father get the better of him. I couldn’t abear to hear them, and I used to slip out to the fort behind the house, and after a bit, he’d follow me, and he’d promise, and promise never to let another word cross his lips but what was agreeable. And neither he would, maybe, for a wee bit. It was spring then, and we had promised other to get married in harvest …”
 She paused for a moment or two. Ann’s face grew more rigid, and she turned away her eyes from the shining tin on the dresser, as if its brightness hurt them. There was an old, faded picture hanging on the wall below [80] Jinanna’s bed. A golden-haired lady, in a white frilly Victorian dress, knelt beside a chair on which a pale little girl sat. The words below it were, “My darling is better”. Ann looked at it for a long time before she knew what it meant. She was dreading Jinanna’s next words.
 Presently the weak little thread of a voice took up the story, and went on. “We were terrible busy that year, and I mind - och, oh ! - I mind the way I used to sit up sit night to sew at my wedding clothes. I had a quare lot of nice wee things gathered - I was always terrible fond of nice clothes. And one Sunday evenin’ I come in from the byre with two cans of sweet milk in my hands, and there was Jimmy and my father tearin’ away at each other in the kitchen like mad. My father was standin’ with his back to the dresser, and his face was like the livin’ coal. Before I knew what had happened he had ordered Jimmy out of the house, and told him never to come back, and he just turned in a rage and and went. … I dropped the cans, and ran after him, but maybe he never heard me - sure maybe he thought I was with my father. I went the length of the potato field, and watched him go down the road - he never looked back - he was that headstrong -and then I turned, and came home all my lone, and the heart that dead and heavy in me! Och annee, annee!”’