“Coming here and chapping on my door—on Janet Binnie’s door!—with a horsewhip!”
“There is no use trying to deceive me with bad words. Let me pass.”
“Off with you! you poor creature, you! Sophy Traill had a bad bargain with the like of you, you drunken, lying, savage-like, wife-beating pretence o’ a husband!”
“Mother’ Mother!” cried Christina, coming hastily forward; “Mother, what are you saying at all?”
“The God’s truth, Christina, that and nothing else. Ask the mean, perfectly unutterable scoundrel how he got beyond his mother’s apron-strings so far as this?”
Christina turned to Braelands. “Sir,” she said, “what’s your will?”
“My wife has left her home, and I have been told she is in Mistress Binnie’s house.”
“She is not. We know nothing about the poor, miserable lass, God help her!”
“I cannot believe you.”
“Please yourself anent believing me, but you had better be going, sir. I see Limmer Scott and Mistress Roy and a few more fishwives looking this way.”