JOHN BURNET 
The little house stood dose to the imposing gateway of the 
Laird’s wide domain. The stone Bears which surmounted 
it seemed to be showing their tusky teeth in contempt of 
the poor little grey stone cottage. There was lichen on its 
roof which, however, boasted lovely gold-coloured blossom ; 
I always fancied it grew brighter there than anywhere else. 
Burnet was the “ factor’s man in other words, gardener 
and groom, and odd man to the Laird’s land agent, who 
lived a little bit down the road round the corner. But, 
somehow or other, he always found time to work in his own 
little garden, either early morning or late evening, and it 
was always the picture of neatness. A pocket-handkerchief 
might have covered the whole, and one of the patchwork 
quilts I sometimes saw hanging out to dry at the back — the 
Berry-garden as he called the little slip where he grew his 
potatoes and greens, and watched anxiously the budding of 
his half-a-dozen Currant and Gooseberry bushes. But he 
always had beautiful Gooseberries ; “ Grosarts ” he called 
them. Certainly he would never pick them before they 
grew to a good size ; he maintained they were poison when 
small. I think nowhere do Gooseberries attain a finer size 
than in Scotland. The cottage was at the junction of two 
roads, the highroad to the county town and the road to the 
village or “ oor toun,” as the people about called it, a col- 
lection of straggling, whitewashed, dreary-looking houses, of 
which it might have been said very truthfully, 
Melancholy had marked them for her own. 
