_Characters_
WIDOW MACKAY, _tenant of Balree Croft_.
MÀIRI[1] MACKAY, _her daughter, a domestic servant_.
“SANDY” SPEEDWELL, _artist and poet, of Edinburgh_.
MRS SPEEDWELL, _his mother_.
SCENE: _The “best room” in a crofter’s cottage in the Scottish
Highlands. To the left a small open window, round which honeysuckle
clings and blooms, affords a glimpse of a blue loch, softly screened
by the drooping branches of a silver birch, and glistening in bright
sunshine. Beside the window Màiri Mackay sits knitting a white
shawl. A folding table, with the leaves down, occupies the centre
of the room and is covered with a Mackay tartan plaid. Upon it
stands a dark blue bowl filled with wild roses. Widow Mackay sits
to the right, at her spinning wheel, between the table and a wide,
open fire-place. Peat smoulders in the grate. To the left of the
fire-place is an “easy chair” (a plain arm-chair with a cushion),
and to the right a nursing chair with short legs; a stool is tilted
in front on a deerskin rug. Against the wall, between the little
window and a bedroom door, is a dark mahogany chest of drawers, on
which lies a bulky family Bible between two gaudy vases. Three chairs
are ranged against the wall to the left, and the floor is covered
with flowery waxcloth, brilliantly new. The walls are adorned with
framed portraits of John Knox, John Bunyan, William Ewart Gladstone,
and a Free Church minister. On the high mantelpiece squat two white
porcelain dogs with black noses, and above it is a set of bagpipes. A
“wag-at-the-wa” clock ticks leisurely to the right of the fireplace._