"Neil is to my mind, when the time comes. But yet the child knows not perfectly her Heidelberg. And there is more: she must learn to help her mother about the house before she can manage a house of her own. So in time, I say, it would be a good thing. We have been long good friends."
"We hae been friends for four generations, and we may safely tie the knot tighter now. There are wise folk that say the Dutch and the Lowland Scotch are of the same stock, and a vera gude stock it is,—the women o' baith being fair as lilies and thrifty as bees, and the men just a wonder o' every thing wise and weel-spoken o'. For-bye, baith o' us—Scotch and Dutch—are strict Protestors. The Lady o' Rome never threw dust in our een, and neither o' us would put our noses to the ground for either powers spiritual or powers temporal. When I think o' our John Knox"—
"First came Erasmus, Elder."
"Surely. Well, well, it was about wedding and housekeeping I came to speak, and we'll hae it oot. The land between this place and my place, on the river-side, is your land, Joris. Give it to Katherine, and I will build the young things a house; and the furnishing and plenishing we'll share between us."
"There is more to a wedding than house and land, Elder."
"Vera true, madam. There's the income to meet the outgo. Neil has a good practice now, and is like to have better. They'll be comfortable and respectable, madam; but I think well o' you for speering after the daily bread."
"Well, look now, it was not the bread-making I was thinking about. It was the love-making. A young girl should be wooed before she is married. You know how it is; and Katherine, the little one, she thinks not of such a thing as love and marriage."
"Wha kens what thoughts are under curly locks at seventeen? You'll hae noticed, madam, that Katherine has come mair often than ordinar' to Semple House lately?"