CHAPTER XIV.
When Herries, who had been absent on business, returned to his house, he was annoyed to find that he had missed the emissary from his cousin. 'That means, I suppose, that I must e'en trail out over there myself after office hours,' he said to himself. 'Plague take the woman! And yet she must be visited at some time or another.' Visits, rather of business than of pleasure to his troublesome charge in the Potterrow, were a part of the routine of his life. They would generally be spent in a wrangle over accounts, and yet hardly a wrangle either, for it takes two to make such a thing, and Nancy was incapable of quarrelling. But Herries would spend a laborious hour trying to instil into his volatile charge some notion of the nature of money, and the value of keeping and giving an account thereof. He might as well have tried to instil into the passing winds an appreciation of these practical details. Nancy had but one notion of money—to spend it. Not that even Herries, in his severest moments, could call her selfishly or systematically extravagant, which was the more provoking. It was an infinitesimal house-keeping—that of the tiny household in the Potterrow; but by systematic ideas of cutting her coat according to her cloth in all things, Nancy would not, or could not, be governed, and Herries would drive himself nearly crazy over the futility of his efforts to coerce this delicate, frail, light, feminine thing that so smilingly defied him.
This night, as he prepared himself to walk over to the Potterrow, another annoyance from a feminine source assailed him. Lizzie, his housekeeper, demanded an untimely interview by knocking at his door and then entering his room, followed, at a discreet distance, by, apparently, a satellite.
'Well, woman, what is it?' he demanded crossly.
'Weel ye s'ud ken what it is,' said Ailie, who used all the freedom of speech towards her master of an old servant of his family, which, indeed, she was. 'Was I no' tellin' ye yestreen it was the day I was to gar ma sister's husband's niece—it's the lass Mysie—come oot ower frae the Wabster's Close, to see if she wadna do ye for a help tae me aboot the hoose, noo a'm that auld and failed'—
'Oh, the devil take her!' said Herries, impatiently. 'Of course she'll do if she suits you. It's your business, isn't it?'
'Na! it's just no my business!' retorted the old woman, sourly. 'For when I said I wad like weel to hae a lass, ye hummed and haw'd, and—"the dangers o' the toon!" quo' you—to a young lassie wi' the beaux and sic like. 'Od, I'se gar ye see I'se gotten ane that wull hae nae sic havers. Come ben, Mysie!' She called to her relative, who had remained, meanwhile, on the landing without, and who now obediently appeared. 'Tak the screen aff ye!' commanded Lizzie, alluding to the tartan shawl commonly worn about the head and face by the poorer women of that day.
Mysie divested herself of this garment, and disclosed to view a countenance certainly destitute of any conspicuous allurement to the aforesaid beaux. She was a very tall and somewhat grenadier-like young woman, with a pale, rather haggard, face, a quick, roving glance, and a general air as of something newly caught and altogether untamed.
'She has the three nieces wi' her gude man, ma sister,' continued Lizzie,' and I'se warrant ye weel I waled the little bonniest o' the bilin'! Mysie 'll no be bathered wi' the lads, I'm thinkin'.'
She contemplated her connection with grim approval, almost pride; but Mysie, who had hitherto listened to the curious encomium of her lack of dangerous charms with a perfectly apathetic indifference, uttered, at the last words, a sudden, odd laugh. Herries looked up sharply, but the naturally rather heavy face had become stolidly grave again, and Mysie, ordered to do so by her relative, proceeded meekly to leave the room.