Archie!" she would say, "whatten a time o' night is this of it! God
forgive me for a daft wife!" So it befell, by good management, that she
was not only the first to begin these nocturnal conversations, but
invariably the first to break them off; so she managed to retire and not
to be dismissed.
3. A BORDER FAMILY
Such an unequal intimacy has never been uncommon in Scotland, where the
clan spirit survives; where the servant tends to spend her life in the
same service, a helpmeet at first, then a tyrant, and at last a
pensioner; where, besides, she is not necessarily destitute of the pride
of birth, but is, perhaps, like Kirstie, a connection of her master's,
and at least knows the legend of her own family, and may count kinship
with some illustrious dead. For that is the mark of the Scot of all
classes: that he stands in an attitude towards the past unthinkable to
Englishmen, and remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears,
good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the
dead even to the twentieth generation.
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