The
fallow didna pay eighteenpence to the pound; and there was three
thousand gaen out o' my five! It was nae use, wi' a young family, to
talk o' living on the interest o' our money now. 'We maun tak' a farm,'
says I; and baith Jeannie and her mother saw there was naething else for
it. So I took a farm which lay partly in the Lammermoors and partly in
the Merse. It took the thick end o' eight hundred pounds to stock it.
However, we were very comfortable in it; I found mysel' far mair at hame
than I had been in Edinburgh; for I had employment for baith mind and
hands, and Jeannie very soon made an excellent farmer's wife. Auld
grannie, too, said she never had been sae happy; and the bairns were as
healthy as the day was lang. We couldna exactly say that we were making
what ye may ca' siller, yet we were losing nothing, and every year
laying by a little. There was a deepish burn ran near the onstead. We
had been about three years in the farm, and our youngest lassie was
about nine years auld. It was the summer time, and she had been paidling
in the burn, and sooming feathers and bits o' sticks; I was looking
after something that had gaen wrang about the threshin' machine, when I
heard an unco noise get up, and bairns screamin'. I looked out, and I
saw them runnin' and shoutin'--'Miss Jeannie! Miss Jeannie!' I rushed
out to the barnyard.
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