“Why, Mither?”
“Because you are—the baity o’ you—so weel satisfied wi’ your present mak’ up. That’s a’. And it is a’ that is needfu’ to keep you baith from going forwarder. There’s a lump a’ rank cowardice in it, too.”
“Mother, do you think I am a coward?”
“All women are frightened by what is said o’ them, or even likely to be said o’ them. And nae wonder. Women are far harder judged than men are. You would think the Ten Commands were not made for men. Yet if a woman breaks one o’ them, God’s sake! what a sinner she is!”
“I don’t see what you are meaning, Mither.”
“It’s plain enou’. Men are not set down below notice, if they break the twa first a’ their lives lang, if so be they pay their deficit to God in gold to the kirk. How many men do you know, Christine, who never break the third command? How many men honor the fourth? As to the fifth, Scots are maistly 118 ready to tak’ care o’ their ain folk. The sixth, seventh and eighth belong to the criminal class, and ye’ll allow its maistly made up o’ bad men. Concerning the ninth command, men are warse than women, but men call their ill-natured talk politics, or het’rodoxy, or some ither grand name; and I’ll allow that as soon as they begin to covet their neighbor’s house and wife and horses and cattle, they set to wark, and mak’ money and build a bigger house than he hes, and get a bonnier wife, and finer-blooded horses and cattle—and I’m not saying whether they do well or ill—there is sae much depending on the outcome o’ prosperity o’ that kind. But tak’ men as a whole, they leave the Ten Commands on the shoulders o’ their wives.”
“And do the women obey them, Mither?”
“Middling well. They do love God, and they do go to kirk. They don’t swear, and as a general thing they honor their fathers and mothers. They don’t, as a rule, murder or steal or tak’ some ither woman’s husband awa’ from her. I’m no clear about women and the ninth and tenth command. They are apt to long for whatever is good and beautiful—and I don’t blame them.”
“I wish I was better educated, Mother. I would be able to decide between Angus and Cluny.”
“Not you. The key of your life is in your heart, not in your brain.”