O ne quart flour

One cup sour milk

One tsp soda

One-half pound lard

One-half pound chopped raisins or currants

Roll two inches thick and bake in a quick oven. Split open, butter, and eat hot.

Margo had toiled and fussed over the measuring, mixing, and rolling. Now she fretted about the heat of the oven. She took unnecessary peeks at this, her first baking. Tea cakes. Not like any she had eaten previously, she was sure, but a tried and true recipe that Kezzie recommended. Her family, she maintained, loved them.

“They should be done in time for tea,” Kezzie offered from her chair at the other end of the room. “Come, sit doon and rest. Y’ve been at it since dawn, lassie.”

Margo tossed aside the floury apron, smoothed her hair at the washstand mirror, and laughed to see the flour on her nose. What a day it had been!

Monday . . . and washday. Ignorant but game, Margo had struggled through, with Kezzie’s advice and help.

“For once,” Kezzie had said, “Cam can get on with the chores. Usually he helps with the wash.”

He still helped. There was no way Margo could hustle the great pails of water needed for the numerous piles of clothes sorted out onto the floor of the kitchen area. The copper boiler alone held about twenty gallons, all carried from the well, filling the boiler, which was placed on the front lids of the wood-burning stove. Galvanized tubs were brought in and placed on a bench, also brought in, and half-filled with cold water to which was added hot water from the boiler. Then, of course, the hard yellow soap had to be shaved and dissolved down in a small pot of hot water. Finally, she was ready to get to the actual washing itself.

Special needlework was done by hand; wool and silk items were done separately. White goods were put into the tub for scrubbing, then lifted by means of an old broom handle and transferred to the boiler. “Dry clothes are never put into the boiler,” Kezzie explained, “because the hot water sets stains.”

Soaking, bleaching, starching, bluing, wringing, all were exhausting. Thanks to Kezzie, dinner cooked at the same time—a pot of beans simmered on the back of the same stove that boiled the white clothes on the front lids.

Pinning a final batch of clothes on the line, Margo declared she would never again toss clothes as casually into the wash as she had done for a lifetime; somehow she’d eke another day’s wear from them! And to think—tomorrow was ironing day.

Clothes washed and hung and drying, there was the routine to go through in reverse. Out went the water, pail by pail, to be dumped as far away as one could stand the pull on one’s arms; out went the tubs, out went the boiler. There was a wet floor to mop, the stove top to blacken. Only then could Margo draw a breath, collapsing onto a kitchen chair.

“What’s for dinner?”

It was Cam, in from the fields. Margo hurried to set out bread and butter and fill glasses with milk to accompany the piping hot beans. “I suppose,” she muttered, half-vexed, half-proud, “I’m bustling ! ”

The tea cakes, later on, were a brilliant idea. Not only were they designed to teach her some baking skills but the fresh delicacies would call for a few moments of rational, civilized living—teatime. Kezzie was all for it, stating that the pantry, fortunately, held dried currants.

When the pan was in the oven and Margo had removed her apron and tidied her hair, she turned toward Kezzie with the decision to have the talk, say the things, ask the questions that had to be faced. It was natural and good to drop onto the rug at Kezzie’s feet, smiling up fondly at her dear old nurse.

“Granny,” she began, using the pet title from childhood, “please. . . .”

“Yes, wee angel,” Kezzie said tenderly, reaching out a worn hand to fondle the lively curls, brushing them back from Margo’s temple.

Margo took the hand in her own. “Granny,” she began again, “ever since Papa said what he did—about Heatherstone staying in Galloway hands—and ever since he said. . . .” Margo paused, her throat tightening.

“What did he say, lassie?”

“He left me this property here, and he said I’d understand if I cared to, or some such words. I think he said I could find the reason . . . if I cared to. Of course I care to! I can’t go on not knowing. There’s some sort of secret here, Granny. Why . . . why did Papa send me here? Why did he say what he did? You’ve got to be the one and only person to tell me, to shed some sort of light on this puzzle. To give me some sort of healing for the frightful ache I feel.”

As she talked, looking into the old face and holding the worn hand, Margo saw the face whiten, felt the hand tremble.

“What is it, Mam? What is it that makes you upset?”

“Lassie . . . lassie,” Kezzie whispered, “leave well enough alone.”

“I can’t. I won’t. Tell me, Kezzie, tell me!” There was enough of the noblewoman in Margo’s voice to remind Kezzie of her status and her life of service.

Kezzie’s throat worked spasmodically; her mouth opened and shut strangely. But no words were forthcoming. Margo gave the hand in hers a little shake.

“I need to know,” she said, more gently, but still with that touch of authority that Kezzie recognized.

Trying to speak, Kezzie’s face grew whiter, if that were possible, and words seemed unable to be uttered. Greatly touched, Margo almost backed down. But if Kezzie didn’t tell her, who would? Her desperation drove her to say—and it may have been the pleading note in her voice that moved Kezzie the most—“Gran . . . Gran . . . tell me—”

Gran tried; it seemed she honestly tried.

Margo loosed Kezzie’s hand, raised herself from a sitting position to her knees, and leaned over Kezzie’s lap, bringing her young face and beseeching eyes close to the ancient face and the closed eyes.

“Tell me, Granny—” Margo forced herself to utter what her heart had been struggling with for twenty-four hours, “is Angus Morrison my father?”

Just before Kezzie’s head fell forward in a half-faint, the withered lips twisted and opened.

“Aye,” Kezzie whispered, tears squeezing from beneath the eyelids. “Aye, lassie. He is indeed. But lassie . . . he dinna ken . . . he dinna ken.”

Leaping wildly to her feet, Margo ran blindly from the room, from the house, her mindless passage taking her through the lines of laundry, into the bush.

With her white clothes trampled in the dirt of the yard, with her proudly made tea cakes burning in the oven, Margo flung herself face down and dug her hands with their telltale curved little fingers into the damp leaf mold.

Cameron Morrison was her half-brother.