“Na, na; I hae nae feelin’s, I’m
thankfu’ to say. I never kent ony guid
come o’ them. They’re a terrible sicht
i’ the gait.”
“Naebody ever thoucht o’ layin’
’t to yer chairge, mem.”
“’Deed, I aye had eneuch adu to du the
thing I had to du, no to say the thing ‘at naebody
wad du but mysel’. I hae had nae leisur’
for feelin’s an’ that,” insisted
Miss Horn.
But here a heavy step descending the stair just outside
the room attracted her attention, and checking the
flow of her speech perforce, with three ungainly strides
she reached the landing.
“Watty Witherspail! Watty!” she called
after the footsteps down the stair.
“Yes, mem,” answered a gruff voice from
below.
“Watty, whan ye fess the bit boxie, jist pit
a hemmer an’ a puckle nails i’ your pooch
to men’ the hen hoose door. The tane maun
be atten’t till as weel’s the tither.”
“The bit boxie” was the coffin of her
third cousin Griselda Campbell, whose body lay on
the room on her left hand as she called down the stair.
Into that on her right Miss Horn now re-entered, to
rejoin Mrs Mellis, the wife of the principal draper
in the town, who had called ostensibly to condole
with her, but really to see the corpse.
“Aih! she was taen yoong!” sighed the
visitor, with long drawn tones and a shake of the
head, implying that therein lay ground of complaint,
at which poor mortals dared but hint.
“No that yoong,” returned Miss Horn.
“She was upo’ the edge o’ aucht
an’ thirty.”
“Weel, she had a sair time o’ ’t.”
“No that sair, sae far as I see—an’
wha sud ken better? She’s had a bien doon
sittin’ (sheltered quarters), and sud hae had
as lang’s I was to the fore. Na, na; it
was nowther sae young nor yet sae sair.”
“Aih! but she was a patient cratur wi’
a’ flesh,” persisted Mrs Mellis, as if
she would not willingly be foiled in the attempt to
extort for the dead some syllable of acknowledgment
from the lips of her late companion.
“‘Deed she was that!—a wheen
ower patient wi’ some. But that cam’
o’ haein mair hert nor brains. She had feelin’s
gien ye like— and to spare. But I
never took ower ony o’ the stock. It’s
a pity she hadna the jeedgment to match, for she never
misdoobted onybody eneuch. But I wat it disna
maitter noo, for she’s gane whaur it’s
less wantit. For ane ‘at has the hairmlessness
o’ the doo ’n this ill wulled warl’,
there’s a feck o’ ten ‘at has the
wisdom o’ the serpent. An’ the serpents
mak sair wark wi’ the doos—lat alane
them ‘at flees into the verra mouws o’
them.”
“Weel, ye’re jist richt there,”
said Mrs Mellis. “An’ as ye say,
she was aye some easy to perswaud. I hae nae doubt
she believed to the ver’ last he wad come back
and mairry her.”
“Come back and mairry her! Wha or what
div ye mean? I jist tell ye Mistress Mellis—an’
it’s weel ye’re named—gien ye
daur to hint at ae word o’ sic clavers, it’s
this side o’ this door o’ mine ye’s
be less acquant wi’.”
