tion>Mary Johnston
Foes
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664569639
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
Said Mother Binning: "Whiles I spin and whiles I dream. A bonny day like this I look."
English Strickland, tutor at Glenfernie House, looked, too, at the feathery glen, vivid in June sunshine. The ash-tree before Mother Binning's cot overhung a pool of the little river. Below, the water brawled and leaped from ledge to ledge, but here at the head of the glen it ran smooth and still. A rose-bush grew by the door and a hen and her chicks crossed in the sun. English Strickland, who had been fishing, sat on the door-stone and talked to Mother Binning, sitting within with her wheel beside her.
"What is it, Mother, to have the second sight?"
"It's to see behind the here and now. Why're ye asking?"
"I wish I could buy it or slave for it!" said Strickland. "Over and over again I really need to see behind the here and now!"
"Aye. It's needed mair really than folk think. It's no' to be had by buying nor slaving. How are the laird and the leddy?"
"Why, well. Tell me," said Strickland, "some of the things you've seen with second sight."
"It taks inner ears for inner things."
"How do you know I haven't them?"
"Maybe 'tis so. Ye're liked well enough."
Mother Binning looked at the dappling water and the June trees and the bright blue sky. It was a day to loosen tongue.
"I'll tell you ane thing I saw. It's mair than twenty years since James Stewart, that was son of him who fled, wad get Scotland and England again
