"'Deed I will not. The beauty and the talents were a' in the lassie. Dora may have said a word now and then, and showed her a thing or two, here and there, but the gifts were Christina's, and the lassie's ain patient wark has brought them to their perfection. That's a crowned truth and I'll suffer no contradiction to it. We shall have to order her wedding feast vera soon. I have not a doubt o' that."
"I hope she will have the sense not to overlook the baronet in her train of admirers."
"You're meaning Sir Thomas Wynton?"
"Yes. He is quite in the mind to buy a handsome share in the works, and his name and money would be a great thing for us. I intend to bring him here to dinner to-morrow. Tell Christina I am looking to her to bring him into the family, and into the works."
"I'll be no such fool, Robert Campbell. I shall say nothing anent Sir Thomas, save the particular fact of his coming here to dinner. Little you know o' women, if you think any lassie can be counselled to marry the man she ought to marry."
"Take your own way with her, mother, but mind this—the securing of Sir Thomas Wynton will be a special providence for the Campbells. He has one hundred thousand pounds to invest, and I cannot bear to think of him carrying all that capital anywhere but to the Campbell furnaces."
"I'll manage it. Never fear, Robert, Christina shall be my lady Christina and you shall have the Wynton siller to trade with. It will be a righteous undertaking for me, for it is fairly sinful in Sir Thomas, hiding his hundred thousand talents—as it were—in a napkin. A bank is no better than a napkin; money is just folded away in it; and money is made round that it may roll. The Campbell works will set the hundred thousand pieces rolling and gathering more, and more, and still more. Losh! it makes me tremble to think of them going out o' the Campbell road. That would be an unthinkable calamity."
"If you can manage it, mother, it——"
"'If'—there's no 'if' in the matter." She smiled and nodded, and seemed so sure of success, that Robert found it difficult to refrain himself from making certain calculations, dependent upon a larger capital.
The next day at noon Mrs. Campbell remarked in a tone of inconvenience, or household discomfort: "I believe, girls, your brother is going to bring Sir Thomas Wynton home with him to-night. I am fairly wearied of the man's name."