"Aye," said Blanka, "but you might have mentioned it. She looked high and low for that liniment, and never thought to look in the barn."
Hannish shrugged. "By then, she'd been yellin' so long I was afraid to come out. I was only ten and I'd spilled most of it."
"What did she do to you?" Sassy asked.
"She made me scrub the kitchen floor on my hands and knees every day for a week. I never took anything without permission again."
Egan chuckled. "That was Aunt Donnel's favorite punishment. When we were growin' up, the MacGreagor kitchen floor was the cleanest in all of Scotland."
Dugan smiled too. "And she'd not forget either. If the kitchen floor was already being scrubbed by one of us, there was always the next week. No Sir, she never once forgot a punishment."
"How many of you were there?" Halen asked.
Hannish looked to Blanka for the answer. "Seven?"
"Eight, all boys, save McKenna. A terrible fever one year took both my boys and two of Donnel's. That was before Egan and his mother came to live with us. The elder Mr. MacGreagor loved having children in the house and we always found enough room for more in the servant's quarters somehow."
Seated next to her, McKenna reached over and took Blanka's hand. "I can't think what we would have done after our parents were killed, had you and Donnel not been there to care for us."
"You are orphans too?" Sassy asked.
"Aye," Hannish answered, "but we had a duke for an uncle. He moved us all into the big house where Jessie cooked for us, Alistair was my Uncle's butler and Millie was head housekeeper. By then I was sixteen."
"What happened to your parents?" Cathleen wanted to know.
McKenna looked at the pain in her brother's eyes and answered for him, "They were killed when a man failed to pull a switch and two trains hit head on."
Halen caught her breath. "Dear God." Her words lingered as all of them imagined what that might have been like.
"Those were the worst of days," Blanka said, her eyes filling with tears.
"Aunt Blanka," said Dugan, "Would you like to rest now?"
Blanka brushed her tears away. "Aye, but I will say this about my sister. She was a good woman, the best there ever was. We had our troubles, same as anybody, but we lived a good life." All the men stood when Blanka got up and took Dugan's arm. "We had a very good life…all in all."
*
Drawn by matching dapple-gray horses, the summer hearse came two days later to take Donnel to the church services and from there to the cemetery. The entire household went, even little William, who slept through most of it.