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The first Hamish McDonald had also had a brother, Finnean, who had cohter had married a Maclaine, one of my own ancestors

I had always known that Robbie and I shared the sae; and I had known of Robbie's close attachment with the McDonalds from the back country Now that I was here in the back country, and I began to see what the McDonald clan was

In the lowcountry, a person ht be of the planter class, or tradesman, or servant; in the back country there were the Scots, and their servants The servants were few in number, and everyone worked with their hands The elder Has for the fireplace; I often saw red-haired girls going toward the kitchens carrying milk pails Grandmothers carried infants and boys in their teens worked in the stables shoeing horses Manual labor was seen as accoery

In addition to the large house, where Hamish and Eleanor and Harandmothers, there were the houses of Hamish and Charles' six children All ithin a half-hour's walk of the main house Almost every supper, and for every Sunday's dinner, the entire clan was at the house; they were over thirty in nu roo the kitchen servants from breakfast time until after supper The McDonald wo the meals No wonder they ate supper so early; it would take hours to clean up afterward If they had taken their evening meal late as we did in the lowcountry, Eleanor would have been up past ht

It seemed that I, too, was expected to keep my hands busy After dinner a few days after we arrived, as I sat on the porch with the woirls, Eleanor placed a tin pan in e handful of unshelled cream peas into it I looked up at her, my mouth opened Surely she did not expect me to shell peas-that was servant's work

But Eleanor had already turned away I looked aboutthe peas out, tossing the husks into piles on the floor, chatting and laughing

I picked up one of the long, bumpy pods and broke off the end It oozed water I worked at the seam with my thumbs, but the skin see an to burn in me