Alexander had made a movement in this direction when from beyond Jarvis Barrow came a woman's voice.

It belonged to Jenny Barrow, the farmer's unmarried daughter, who kept house for him.
"Father, do you gae on, and let the young gentlemen bide a wee and rest their banes and tell a puir woman wha never gaes onywhere the news!" "Then do ye sit awhile, laddies, with the womenfolk," said Jarvis Barrow.

"But give me pardon if I go, for I canna keep the kirk waiting." He was gone, staff and gray plaid and a collie with him.

Jenny, his daughter, appeared in the door.
"Come in, Mr.Alexander, and you, too, sir, and have a crack with us! We're in the dairy-room, Elspeth and Gilian and me." She was a woman of forty, raw-boned but not unhandsome, good-natured, capable, too, but with more heart than head.

It was a saying with her that she had brains enough for kirk on the Sabbath and a warm house the week round.