“Your father’s a strange man,” said Mrs. Douglas. “You are old enough to see that for yourselves. When there are men coming about a house, there’s more expense. Many’s the dinner he got off my father’s table before he married me--and to have your lads about the house would never please him. Many is the thought I take about it when ye think I have nothing in my head but my own trouble. He would never put up with your lads about the house.”
“Mother!” cried Kirsteen, with indignation, “we are not servant lasses with men coming courting. Who would dare to speak like that of us?”
Mary laughed a little over her work. She was darning the stockings of the household, with a large basket before her, and her hand and arm buried in a large leg of grey-blue worsted. She did not blush as Kirsteen did, but with a little simper accepted her mother’s suggestion. “If we are ever to get away from here, there will have to be lads about the house,” she said, with practical wisdom; “if we’re not to do it Anne’s way.”
“Lord bless us, what are you saying? If your father heard you, he would turn us all to the door,” said Mrs. Douglas, in dismay. “I’ve promised him on my bended knees I will never name the name of that--poor thing, poor thing,” the mother cried suddenly, with a change of voice, falling into trembling and tears.
“I’ve heard she was real well off,” said Mary, “and a good man, and two servant maids keepit for her. And it’s just an old fashion thinking so much of your family. The old Douglases might be fine folk, but what did they ever do for us?”
“Mary! hold your peace,” cried Kirsteen, flaming with scorn and wrath. “Would ye deny your good blood, and a grand race that were as good as kings in their day? And what have we to stand upon if it’s not them? We would be no more than common folk.”
The conviction of Kirsteen’s indignant tones, the disdainful certainty of being, on the natural elevation of that grand race, something very different from common folk, over-awed the less convinced and less visionary pair. Mrs. Douglas continued to weep, silently rocking herself to and fro, while Mary made what explanations she could to her fiery assailant.
“I was meaning nothing,” she said, “but just that they’re all dead and gone, and their grandeur with them. And the fashion’s aye changing, and folk that have plenty are more thought upon than them that have nothing, whatever may be their name.”