"I'm not going to stop in this house, and see your wife and bonnie bairn starved for food. The poor bit laddie is crying the now, for his bread and milk, and your mother—wi' the hard heart o' her—willna let me gie either the bairn, or his mother a mouthfu'; so I am going back to the Hielands whar folks hae hearts—and Jepson is going likewise, and the twa lasses are going. Pay me my honest wages, Maister Campbell, for I'm in a hurry to get out o' hearing o' the starving baby, crying for his bowl o' milk."
"That will do, McNab. The Perth train does not leave until eleven o'clock. Go into the library, I want to speak to you, and take Jepson and the two girls there. I will come in a few minutes." He was obeyed without a word, for he spoke with that tone and manner which compelled even the leather-dressed, leather-masked men who fed his furnaces to cower before him.
When McNab and Jepson had left the room he turned to his mother and asked: "Am I to pay them, and send them away?"
"That would be unspeakable foolishness. I can not possibly do without McNab and Jepson. The two other hizzies can go if they want to."
"Then why do you meddle with McNab?"
"It is not her business to wait on your wife and child."
"Then whose business is it?"
"No one's, at present."
"Then see you find some one to-day whose business it will be to wait on them. If you do not, I will take my wife and child myself to the Victoria Hotel."
"I am fairly worn out with the quarrelling and trouble your wife and child make in the house. There is no pleasuring either of them. I have sent two girls to her, and she wouldn't give house-room to one, nor the other—decent girls, as I could find."