But she was roused all at once to a sense of exposure and insecurity.
She looked up, and at the same moment the hawk-nose of her aunt came
round the _door-cheek_. Auntie's temper was none the better than usual
that it had pleased the _Almichty_ to take the brother whom she loved,
and to leave behind the child whom she regarded as a painful
responsibility. And now with her small, fierce eyes, and her big, thin
nose--both red with suppressed crying--she did not dawn upon the sense
of Annie as an embodiment of the maternity of the universe.
"Ye plaguesome brat!" cried Auntie; "there has Betty been seekin' ye,
and I hae been seekin' ye, far an' near, i' the verra rottan-holes; an'
here ye are, on yer ain father's buryin' day, that comes but
ance--takin' up wi' a coo."
But the causes of Annie's preference of the society of Brownie to that
of Auntie might have been tolerably clear to an onlooker, without word
spoken. For to Annie and her needs, notwithstanding the humble
four-footedness of Brownie, there was in her large mild eyes, and her
hairy, featureless face, all nose and no nose, more of the divine than
in the human form of Auntie Meg. And there was something of an
indignation quite human in the way the cow tossed her bound head and
neck towards the woman that darkened the door, as if warning her off
her premises.
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