“The boy’s no kith nor kin of mine,” said Jean Clerk, “except a very far-out cousin’s son.” She turned her face away from both of them and pretended to be very busy folding up her plaid, which, as is well known, can only be done neatly with the aid of the teeth and thus demands some concealment of the face. The sister passed behind the Paymaster and the boy and startled the latter with a sly squeeze of the wrist as she did so.
“Do you tell me, my good woman,” demanded the Paymaster, “that you would set him out on the road homeless on so poor an excuse as that? Far-out cousin here or far-out cousin there, he has no kin closer than yourself between the two stones of the parish. Where’s your Hielan’ heart, woman?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my heart, Captain Campbell,” said Jean tartly, “but my pocket’s empty. If you think the boy’s neglected you have a house of your own to take him into; it would be all the better for a young one in it, and you have the money to spend that Jean Clerk has not.” All this with a very brave show of spirit, but with something uncommonly moist about the eyes.
The Paymaster, still clutching the boy at the shoulder, turned on his heel to go, but a side glance at Jean Clerk’s face again showed him something different from avarice or anger.
“You auld besom you!” said he, dunting the floor with his rattan, “I see through you now; you think you’ll get him put off on me. I suppose if I refused to take him in, you would be the first to make of him.”
The woman laughed through her tears. “Oh, but you are the gleg-eyed one, Captain. You may be sure I would not see my cousin’s grandchild starving, and I’ll not deny I put him in your way, because I never knew a Campbell of Kiels, one of the old bold race, who had not a kind heart for the poor, and I thought you and your sister could do better than two old maiden women in a garret could do by him.”
“You randy!” said he, “and that’s the way you would portion your poor relations about the countryside. As if I had not plenty of poor friends of my own! And what in all the world am I to make of the youth?”
“You’ll have nothing to do with the making of him, Captain Campbell,” said Jean Clerk, now safe and certain that the boy’s future was assured. “It’ll be Miss Mary will have the making of him, and I ken the lady well enough--with my humble duty to her--to know she’ll make him a gentleman at the very least.”