Margot laughed at this remark. “You’ll not be far wrang in that observe, Christine,” she said, “but the lad may be far out o’ his reckoning, and I’m not carin’ if it be so. Nae doubt he thought the lassie wad be easier controlled than her brither, who, I was led to believe, had a vera uncertain temper. Roberta may pay a’ our wrangs yet. Little women are gey often parfect Tartars.”
“Mither! Mither! You wouldn’t wish your ain lad to marry a Tartar o’ a wife, and sae be miserable.”
“Wouldn’t I? A stranger winning their way wi’ the Raths’ siller, wouldna hae troubled me, it would hae been out o’ my concern. Christine, there are two things no good woman likes to do. One is to bring a fool into the warld, and the other is to bring one o’ them clever fellows, who live on other people’s money, instead o’ working their way up, step by step. I’m shamed o’ my motherhood this day!”
“Na, na, Mither! Think of Norman, and Allan, and the lave o’ the lads!”
“And forbye, I think shame o’ any son o’ mine being married in a foreign country, in France itsel’, the French being our natural enemies.”
“Not just now, Mither, not just now.”
“Our natural enemies! and a kind o’ people, that dinna even speak like Christians. Ye ken I hae heard their language in this vera room, Christine, and sorry I am to hae permitted the like.”
“There’s nae harm in it, Mither.”
“It led him astray. If Ruleson’s lad hadna kent the French tongue, he would hae persuaded thae Raths that America was the only place to see the warld in.”