“I cannot help that Madame. Braelands is well able to row his own boat. At any rate, I am not called to take an oar in it.”
“Yes, you are. I have been a good customer to you, Mistress Kilgour.”
“I am not denying it; at the same time I have been a good dress and bonnet maker to you, and earned every penny-bit you have paid me. The obligation is mutual, I’m thinking.”
“I can be a still better customer if you will prevent this gentle-shepherding and love-making. I would not even scruple at a twenty pound note, or perhaps two of them.”
“Straa! If you were Queen of England, Madame, I would call you an insolent dastard, to try and bribe me against my own flesh and blood. You are a very Judas, to think of such a thing. Good blood! fine family! indeed! If your son is like yourself, I’m not caring for him coming into my family at all.”
“Mistress Kilgour, you may close my account with you. I shall employ you no more.”
“Pay me the sixteen pounds odd you owe me, and then I will shut my books forever against Braelands. Accounts are not closed till outstanding money is paid in.”
“I shall send the money.”
“The sight of the money would be better than the promise of it, Madame; for some of it is owing more than a twelvemonth;” and Mistress Kilgour hastily turned over to the Braelands page of her ledger, while Madame, with an air of affront and indignation, hastily left the shop.
Following this wordy battle with her dressmaker, Madame had an equally stubborn one with her son, the immediate consequence of which was that very interview whose close was witnessed by Andrew Binnie. In this conference Braelands acknowledged his devotion to Sophy, and earnestly pleaded for Mistress Kilgour’s favour for his suit. She was now quite inclined to favour him. Her own niece, as mistress of Braelands, would be not only a great social success, but also a great financial one. Madame Braelands’s capacity for bonnets was two every year; Sophy’s capacity was unlimited. Madame considered four dresses annually quite extravagant; Sophy’s ideas on the same subject were constantly enlarging. And then there would be the satisfaction of overcoming Madame. So she yielded easily and gracefully to Archie Braelands’s petition, and thus Sophy suddenly found herself able to do openly what she had hitherto done secretly, and the question of her marriage with Braelands accepted as an understood conclusion.