"Nonsense! It will not affect you in any way."
"There is Dora's breakfast, who is to carry it upstairs to her?"
"It is quite time that nonsense was stopped! Let the high-stomached English 'my lady' come to the family breakfast table. It is good enou' for the like o' her. But I'll tell you how it is. McNab has the habit o' humoring her wi' dainties—mushrooms on toast, a few chicken livers, and the like; and our decent oatmeal, and bread and feesh, arena as delicate as food should be, for this daughter o' a poor Methodist preacher."
"Come, mother, her father at least is a servant of God, one of His messengers, and there is no nobility like to that in this world. You know well, that Scotland has always paid more honor to God's servants, than to the servants of earthly princes."
"Scotsmen arena infallible in their religious views. I ken one thing sure, and that is ministers' daughters hae been the deil's daughters to me, and to my sons—vera Eves o' temptation wi' the apple o' sin and misery in their hands for my two bonnie lads."
"I wonder, mother, where my brother is."
"He is dead. I comfort mysel' wi' that thought. Death was the best thing that could happen him. The poor lad, not long out o' his teens, and tied to a wife, and to the wife's mother likewise. Never was a finer lad flung to the mischief than your brother Da—nay, my tongue willna speak his name. Now then, remember your brother, and don't let your wife ruin you, Robert."
"There is no mother-in-law in my case—it is my wife that has the mother-in-law," and he laughed in a grim, self-satisfied way.
The mother-in-law in question was not offended, far from it; she laughed too, and then answered: "Ay, the poor lass has the mother-in-law, but you hae the mother, and be thankfu' for the gift and the grace o' her. Your mother willna see you wronged, nor put upon. She'll back you up in a' that is for your authority and welfare. She will that!"
"Well, well! We were talking of Ducie."