“Doubtful is their gladness. Two are company, three are a crowd. Yet so it is! I must run into danger, like the rest of women.”
“Is that thy Easter gown, Sunna?” asked Mistress Brodie.
“It is. Dost thou like it?”
“Who would not like it? The rumour goes abroad that thy grandfather sent to Inverness for it. Others say it came to thee from Edinburgh.”
“Wrong are both stories. I am happy to say that Sunna Vedder gave herself a dress so pretty and so suitable.”
With these smiling words she left the room and the elder women shrugged their shoulders and looked expressively at each other. “What can a sensible man like Boris Ragnor see in such a harum-scarum girl!” was Rahal Ragnor’s question, and Barbara Brodie thought it was all Adam Vedder’s fault. “He ought to have married some sensible woman who would have brought up the girl as girls ought to be brought up,” she answered; adding, “We may as well remember that the management of women, at any age, is a business clean beyond Adam Vedder’s capabilities.”
“Adam is a clever man, Barbie.”
“Book clever! What is the use of book wisdom when you have a live girl, full of her own way, to deal with?”
“Conall chose the husbands for his daughters. They were quite suitable to the girls and they have been very happy with them.”